Professor Dr. Dr. h. c. Peter Koslowski Department of Philosophy Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam/Free University Amsterdam De Boelelaan 1105 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands E-n1ail:
[email protected] Website: www.fiph.de/koslowski
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Absolute Historicity, Theory of the Becoming Absolute, and the Affect for the Particular in German Idealism and Historism: Introduction PETER KOSLOWSKI
German idealism introduces a new understanding of the historical to the history of ideas. The historical becomes absolute historicity and the historicity of the absolute. In this sense, German Idealism is the discovery of historicity in the strong meaning of the term. The ontological quality of the historical as such had already been discovered by the Enlightenment but it is the contribution of German Idealism to attribute historicity to totality and even the absolute. Absoluteness is thereby attributed to the historical. Even God is subjected to history and in the historical process of becoming conscious according to Hegel and Schelling. The origins of the absolute concept of historicity lie in Schelling's system of identity and Hegel's dialectics of the absolute spirit. Schelling introduces the systenl of the identity of the absolute subject and the absolute object, of spirit and nature as the basic structure of the totality of being which is beingin-becoming. The world process and being are the becoming conscious of the subject or spirit at the object or nature. All being, even the being of the absolute, is subjected to time and history. There is no supra-temporal realm of being. Schelling's identity system was taken up by Hegel. Hegel's basic idea is that becoming is the movement from nothingness to being, a process in which the absolute falls from itself into nature ("der Abfall der Idee von sich") to become self-conscious absolute spirit in the dialectics of an absolute historical process. Hegel transforms Schelling's identity system furthermore in the direction of a dialectical process of historical totality. German Idealism dynamizes Spinoza's pantheism. The identity of God and nature is not like in Spinoza being-in-identity but being-in-becoming, an absolute process. It is the history of the progressing consciousness of the identity of absolute subject and absolute object.
PETER KOSLOWSKI At the beginning of his work Philosophische Untersuchungen Uber das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit (Philosophical Inquiries into the Nature of Human Freedom) of 1809, Schelling explains his philosophy of the historical absolute and defends himself against the reproach of being a pantheist and atheist. God's being is in becoming but this does not imply that the absolute is identical with every mistaken aspect of being and every accident of history. It is identical with the historical process in total. This dynamic pantheism or one-in-all philosophy does not annihilate the singular and particular, according to Schelling. 1 He does, however, not recognize here yet that the dynamized pantheism will give a new and hitherto unknown value to the particular and unique as a stage of the realization of the absolute in the following decades of historism in the 19th century. The system of identity as the metaphysical basis of the philosophy of history in German Idealism gives ground to two major ideas: the philosophy of history as the theory of the development of an absolute substrate of temporal or historical being on the one hand and the elevation of the singular and particular to the realization of the absolute in historism on the other hand. The first, the philosophy of history of German Idealism, is a metaphysical theory that claims to understand the laws of development of totality, the second, the philosophical emphasis on the historically singular and particular, forms the core of the Historical School's concern for the uniqueness and importance of every instantiation of the spirit and of culture in every historical period and location, its preoccupation with the particular. Although historism defmed itself as a critique of the totalistic philosophy of history in German Idealism it remains still shaped by its pantheistic idea that every historical instantiation is an instantiation of the spirit. The Geisteswissenschaften, the human sciences of the spirit, remain, even in their very term, indebted to their origins in the Hegelian philosophy of spirit. The philosophy of history of German Idealism became subjected to a crisis due to the fact that it could not solve the problem of the relationship between freedom and necessity in the development of history. If the absolute develops according to a metaphysical logic as Hegel assumed, it is not free from this logic and process but subjected to it. The question arises whether an absolute that is not free can be absolute. The necessitarian connotations characteristic of the philosophy of history, be it Hegel's absolute idealism or F.W.J. SCHELLING: Philosophical Inquiries into the Nature of Human Freedom, La Salle, Illinois (Open Court) 4th paperback printing 1992, p. 16.
2
INTRODUCTION Marx's dialectical materialism, stem from the idea that there are laws of the development of history or a preconceived "logic" in history. The metaphysical philosophy of history is a theory of laws of history. Schelling has been the first thinker to see this Achilles' heel of German Idealism and to criticize Hegel's determinism and dialectical necessitarianism. The thinkers of historism followed Schelling in the emphasis that the historically singular can not be derived from the general. Not all philosophy of history is Hegelian as several of the contributions to this volume demonstrate. For the present debate on the philosophy of history, the Kantian and Enlightenment traditions have to be considered as well, and they are so in this volume. With the volume at hand, the Historical School's contribution to the philosophy of history and the theory of history and historiography is approached within a larger project on the Historical School's contribution to the study of society, economy, culture, and politics. The Historical School is characterized by a strong concept of historicity of human society, of its culture, economy, ethics, law, and politics. The Historical School stresses not only the historical character of cultural phenomena in general but their uniqueness and singularity. In its emphatic concept of historicity, the Historical School can not be understood without its metaphysical origins from which it distanced itself but at the same time remained linked to. The discovery of historicity implies a countermovement to the rationalism of the 18th century and its idea of the foundations of ethics and law on reason only. Starting with German Idealism and European Romanticism, the new awareness of the historicity of human culture tried to reconcile the dualism of reason and history. History is at the centre of the Historical School. Its discovery of historicity was caused by the emphasis on world history and historical development in the philosophy of history expounded in German Idealism. When the German historians after Hegel further developed the historical method they felt the need to give more room to the singular, the unexpected, the unforeseeable, the contingent, and the free then the idealist philosophy of history had provided for. "Historical greatness is", as Droysen put it, "only a piece of dust in the theophany". 2 How even more so is the ordinary historical event only the dust of a piece of dust of the absolute! To recognize the meaning of 2
GrundrifJ der Historik (Outline for a Theory of Historiography), Leipzig 2nd ed. 1875, paragraph 90.
JOHANN GUSTAV DROYSEN:
3
PETER KOSLOWSKI
history or its laws of development is a difficult task for the historian. The task of a philosophy of history is, as Leopold Ranke put it, unsolvable. The historical event and the historical actors retain, however, their pantheistic meaningfulness for the realization of the absolute in the historical school. In this sense, it is true for most of the central authors of historism what Gadamer attributed to Wilhelm Dilthey: They were always already on the way to the absolute. 3 Historism emancipates the human sciences from the metaphysics of German Idealism. It criticizes the "grand theory" of world history in idealism and remains also connected to its pantheistic origins. This metaphysical connection can not only be considered·a theoretical weakness. It is also a theoretical strength of historism since it gives the human sciences a deeper meaning and metaphysical unity that unifies the cultural sciences as the sciences of the spirit. The theory of history and of historiography, the methodology of the historical sciences, forms the other major topic of the volume at hand by which it makes the attempt to elaborate the relevance of historism for today's historical and cultural studies. The Historical School is worth to be reconsidered due to its insight in the historical nature of society, economy, and culture. The cultural sciences must include the determinedness of human culture by history, even if this inclusion of the historical dimension creates an additional difficulty of analysis that unhistorical approaches can avoid. It is open whether the idea of historism that the culture of a historical period and a nation is determined by a "spirit of time" (Zeitgeist) and a "spirit of a people" (Volksgeist) is a meaningful and sensible question to be asked. The question whether there are common features of an epoch and of a people can not, however, be discarded from the outset as being particularistic and nationalistic. This volume has been produced as part of the project "The Historical School. Economics, Economic Ethics, Theory and Philosophy of History, Law and Political Science in the German Human and Social Sciences Tradition" supported by the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung. The project tries to throvJ light on economics and the social sciences, on the study of society and history, from the tradition of German Idealism and Historism and aims at an approach to economics and the social sciences as sciences of culture and of the spirit (Geisteswissenschaften). 3
HANS-GEORG GADAMER:
Wahrheit und Methode, TUbingen (Mohr Siebeck) 2.
Aufl. 1965, p. 223.
4
INTRODUCTION The volume at hand presents the fourth volume on the Historical School after two volumes on the older and younger Historical School and one volume on the theory of capitalism in the German economic tradition. 4 The contributions to this volume have first been discussed in a workshop in Viehhofen near Zell am See, Salzburger Land, Austria, in December 2000 and have been further elaborated since then. The editor and the contributors to this volume express their appreciation to the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung, Cologne, Germany, for their continuous support to this volume and to the entire project on the Historical School. Historism can be defined by four characteristics. 5 It is first the approach to historize the different branches of knowledge. It is second the attempt to find diachronic laws of history. It is third the recognition that all periods and places of history have their specific and unique meaning and importance that they derive from themselves and not only from their relationship with the historical center of power and meaning. Historism is fourth the readiness and the will to be modest in one's conclusions, to collect and select historical data, sources, and documents. With this will to be modest in one's conclusions comes the conconlitant attitude of relativism and modesty connected with historical empiricism. In this sense, historism is a human attitude characteristic to all periods that endeavor to understand history and society.
4
Cf. P. KOSLOWSKI (Ed.): The Theory ofEthical Economy in the Historical School.
Wilhelm Roscher, Lorenz von Stein, Gustav Schmoller, Wilhelm Dilthey and Contemporary Theory, Heidelberg, New York, Tokyo (Springer-Verlag) 1995, reprint 1997, 343 pp.; P. KOSLOWSKI (Ed.): Methodology of the Social Sciences, Ethics, and Economics in the Newer Historical School. From Max Weber and Rickert to Sombart and Rothacker, Heidelberg, New York, Tokyo (SpringerVerlag) 1997, 564 pp.; P. KOSLOWSKI (Ed.): The Theory of Capitalism in the German Economic Tradition: Historism, Ordo-Liberalism, Critical Theory, Solidarism, Heidelberg, New York, Tokyo (Springer-Verlag) 2000, 587 pp. - In the series "Studies in Economic Ethics and Philosophy has also been published: H.H. NAU and B. SCHEFOLD (Eds.): The Historicity of Economics. Continuities
and Discontinuities of Historical Thought in 19th and 20th Century Economics, Heidelberg, New York, Tokyo (Springer-Verlag) 2002, 245 pp. 5
Cf. also KARL ACHAM: "Diltheys Beitrag zur Theorie der Kultur- und
Sozialwissenschaften", Dilthey-Jahrbuch fur Philosophie und Geschichte der Geisteswissenschaflen, 3 (1985), pp. 9-51.
5
Part A
German Idealism's Philosophy of History and its Contemporary Critique
Chapter 1
Schlegel's Theory of History and his Critique of Idealistic Reason PETER L. OESTERREICH
I. II. III.
'Death Absolute': Schlegel's Critique of Absolute Reason 'The Idea of the Vivid Word': Rhetorical Anthropology as a Basis of Schlegel's Theory of History 'The Irony of Love': The Three Basic Rules of Conjectural Historiography
The discovery of historicity in German Philosophy is a tale which cannot be told without taking into account the late philosophy of Friedrich Schlegel. In his youth, F. Schlegel, who created the Ironic Idealism of the Athenaeum 1, was a prominent 'leader'2 of the early ronlantic movement. Hegel's famous system of absolute reason can be interpreted as a negative reaction against Schlegel, whose concept of infinite irony was condemned as "the evil as such,,3 and as "absolute sophistry"4. In the wake of the general spiritual tum in late Romanticism, Schlegel began to reconstruct his philosophy. Living in Vienna and in Dresden in his later years, he attempted a new beginning in his philosophical thinking. The
2 3
4
H. DIERKES: "Ironie und System. Friedrich Schlegels 'Philosophische Lehrjahre''', in: Philosophisches Jahrbuch, 97 (1990), pp. 251-276; and PETER L. OESTERREICH: "'Wenn die Ironie wild wird ... ': Die Symbiose von Transzendentalphilosophie und Tropus bei Friedrich Schlegel", in: Rhetorik: Ein internationales Jahrbuch, 12 (1993), pp. 31-39. See W. DILTHEY: Gesammelte Schriften, XIV, 2, Gottingen (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht), p. 670. See G.W.F. HEGEL: Werke, vol. 7, ed. by E. MOLDENHAUER, K.M. MICHEL, Frankfurt a.M. (Suhrkamp) 1979, p. 279. loco cit., p. 280.
PETER L. OESTERREICH result was his late Philosophy of Life, which he presented in three series of public lectures. This trilogy of philosophical oratory comprises Schlegel's lectures on the Philosophy of Life (1827), the Philosophy of History (1828) and the Philosophy of Language and the Word (1828/29). Due to Schlegel's sudden death in Dresden on January 12th , 1829, his last lectures about the Philosophy ofLanguage and the Word remained unfinished. Within the general evolution of a historical consciousness, Schlegel's late philosophy plays a role which is as significant as Schelling's. 5 On the one hand he critizised the claim of the absolute validity of idealistic reason, which is incorporated in Hegel's system. On the other hand he invented, as a spiritual soul mate of Schelling, a new historical style of thinking. In contrast to Hegel, he emphasized the differences between reason and reality rather than their similarities. Starting from this perspective Schlegel discovered the positiveness of life and the historical character of human existence and culture. It was already in his Philosophical Apprenticeship that Schlegel conceived of history as a synthesis of criticism, religion and rhetoric. 6 The constellation of these three disciplines also characterizes the historical thinking in his late philosophy which comprises, first, a polemics against idealistic reason, second, a new concept of universal history developed from a Christian and spiritual perspective and, finally, a rhetorical concept of historiography.
I. 'Death Absolute': Schlegel's Critique of Absolute Reason The modern quality of Schlegel's philosophy arises from its critical and ironical self-reflexion which is inspired by the metacritical mentality of a philosophy of philosophies: "The spirit of a philosophy is its being a philoso-
5
6
For the development of Schlegel's late philosophy see: F. LEDERBOGEN: Friedrich Schlegels Geschichtsphilosophie. Ein Beitrag zur Genesis der historischen Weltanschauung, Leipzig (Verlag der Dlirr'schen Buchhandlung) 1908, pp. 109-151 and "Die Grundlagen der Schlegelschen Spatphilosophy und Idealismuskritik" in: KA 8, CVII-CLII. See: KA (= Kritische-Friedrich-Schlegel-Ausgabe, ed. by E. BEHLER, 1.-1. ANSTETT, H. EICHNER, 35 vols., Paderbom/Mlinchen/Wien/Zlirich (Schoningh /Thomas Verlag) 1958ff., 18, 312.
10
SCHLEGEL'S THEORY OF HISTORY phy ofphilosophies."7 This perspective protects the philosopher from unconsciously identifying himself with his own work. It can be described as a metacritical reflexivity which establishes a critical distance to a philosophical system which itself is a construction of dialectical reason. Schlegel's criticism of German Idealism arises from this metacritical mentality. In his review of Jacobi (1822) he offers a critical characterization of the philosophy of his contemporaries. This critique of the 'outstanding systems of the last epoch of German Philosophy,g provides the matrix for the complete criticism of reason which we find in his late Philosophy ofLife. Schlegel's attacks on contenlporary philosophical systems, which are highly polemical at times, share a profound theoretical background. Schlegel explains that dialectical reason is merely a power of logical synthesis. Described in rhetorical terms, reason is a power of judgement (iudicium), not an inventive faculty (ingenium). Certainly it is a faculty of indefinite logical thinking and formal construction, "but it cannot invent or produce anything"9. In contrast to imagination, reason is no creative faculty. According to Schlegel the lack of poetic power turns reason into something negative something which is separated from real life. Therefore, the absolute system, as the highest result which can be achieved in an immanent dialectical evolution, can principally never do justice to the positiveness of historical reality. Reason can only produce an absolute phantasma, which Schlegel called 'the dead absolute' (das todte Absolute).lO In concreto Schlegel's criticism of the contemporary philosophy of systems is founded upon the classical distinction between knowledge and faith. Consequently we can distinguish between two different forms of knowledge: a) Negative knowledge, which is not connected to faith: It consists of logical or dialectical identities only. Comprising the features of formal perfectibility and absolute necessity this negative knowledge is related to mathematics. In philosophy, however, negative knowledge will necessarily turn into sophistry, because it lacks any connection to the positive facts of real life. It will be nothing more than "dialectical play, and sophistical artificiality"ll. 7 8
KA 18,37.
9
KA 10,496.
KA 8, 585.
10 KA 10, 524. 11 Ibid.
11
PETER L. OESTERREICH b) Positive knowledge, which is connected to faith: It is partly based on personal convictions and independent assumptions. As an independent and personal knowledge it corresponds to history and real life. Positive knowledge is "the vivid knowledge of life, which is as free as life itself' 12. Furthermore, it represents the appropriate and apt knowledge of the Philosophy ofLife, which includes "the most perfect of all positive knowledge" 13 . The distinction between positive and negative knowledge forms the background of Schlegel's main argument against the Idealistic philosophy of systems. This argument is not directed against any specific content, but against the overall negative character of idealistic knowledge, which Schlegel regards as totally inadequate in comparison to historical reality and human existence. Schlegel argues that the systems of Idealism are based on a fundamental methodical error. They arise from the false scientific assumption "to comprehend philosophical truth in the form of mathematical certainty" 14. Through this fundamental critique Schlegel also attacks Spinoza's mos geometricus and the methodical ideal of modem rationalism which had a formative influence on the idealistic systems. Above all, Schlegel's critique is directed against the "four great 'brains' (Systemhiiupter) of German Philosophy"15 by which he meant Jacobi, Kant, Fichte, and Schelling. In his opinion these four 'brains' are allied through a false orientation of their philosophy towards logical and mathematical forms of knowledge. Nevertheless, this error may lead to unexpected results, as can be seen in the cases of Kant and Jacobi on one hand and Fichte and Schelling on the other. Jacobi and Kant are allied by their insight into the abstract character of negative knowledge that leads to a theoretical scepticism. In their theoretical desperation they seek shelter in a sort of "self-made faith (selbstgemachter Glaube)" 16. This artificial and self-constructed faith, however, should not to be mistaken for a real and lived faith. Being a fiction created by an individual it lacks the positiveness of historical reality. According to Schlegel, Kant's and Jacobi's systems are shaped by the same figure of thought. It can be de-
12 Ibid. 13 KA 8, 590. 14 KA 8, 590. 15 KA 8, 593. 16 KA 8,590.
12
SCHLEGEL'S THEORY OF HISTORY scribed as a 'leap' from theoretical scepticism into a faith that is artificial and untrue. The dogmatic figure of absolute knowledge, on the contrary, is the most important element in the systems of Fichte and Schelling. In Schlegel's opinion the positive and vivid character of their philosophies as well as the divine and the historical reality of mankind, are ruined by the apodictic form of their negative knowledge: The "free and divine knowledge" 17 perishes, because it is exposed to the dead and abstract form of absolute necessity. Thus, neither dogmatic thinkers, such as Fichte and Schelling, nor sceptics like Kant and Jacobi are able to meet the positiveness of real life. Schlegel even goes further. On the basis of his own theory of consciousness, he gives an explanation for the common errors of Idealistic philosophy. All of the four 'Systemhaupter' start from the assumption of a particular and abstract consciousness. Therefore they are prisoners in the "sphere of a fragmented and abstract consciousness"18. In Schlegel's own theory, human consciousness consists of four main faculties: understanding (Verstand), will (Wille), reason (Vernunft), and imagination (Phantasie). Schlegel argues that the four great 'Systemhaupter' usually concentrate on only one of these faculties, each in his own way. Kant can be associated with the faculty of critical understanding, Jacobi with moral will, Fichte with ideal reason, and Schelling with speculative imagination. According to Schlegel, Kant "used his critical understanding in vain in all his works" 19. Jacobi fought "the same never-ending titanic struggle for divine truth by his moral will in all his life,,20. Fichte's Idealism formed the negative "peak of ideal reason"21 and, Schelling created his speculative philosophy of nature merely on the "basis of speculative imagination,,22. Thus Schlegel's critical characterization of the contenlporary German philosophy leads to a twofold result. First, all of the four main systenls of German Idealism represent only one of the four faculties of human consciousness. Consequently they are regarded as incomplete and lacking any connection to real history. Secondly, all the four systems form a 'closed circle' (ab17 KA 8, 591. KA 8,592. KA 8,592.
18 19 20 21 22
Ibid. Ibid. Ibid.
13
PETER L. OESTERREICH
geschlossener Zirkel)23. Therefore, a philosophy which would be built on the four main faculties of the human consciousness is already exhausted by the four systems of Kant, Jacobi, Fichte and Schelling. Schlegel's half-polemical critique of Hegel arises from the conviction that the philosophies of Kant, Jacobi, Fichte and Schelling constitute a "artistically closed and completely vanished"24 circle of systems. 25 In Schlegel's view, Hegel cannot be regarded as an original philosopher, only as a "Fichte developed further,,26. As can be seen, Hegel plays an extremely negative role in Schlegel's history of nl0dem philosophy. As Schlegel argues, Hegel's philosophical system dissimulates its lack of originality by an "endless influx of empty and abstract knowledge"27. In his lectures on the Philosophy of Life from 1828 Schlegel repeated his critique of Hegel. Here he elaborated on the historical dynamics of German Idealism which is determined and characterized by the ironical figure of inversion. This "way of inversion (Gang der Umkehrung)"28 began with Kant's opposition against the presumptions of pure reason, then lead to Fichte's and Schelling's affirmation of the absolute rule of reason and finally ended with Hegel's "idolization"29. Once again Hegel's system seems to represent the highest degree possible in Idealistic aberration. In Schlegel's opinion Hegel's metaphysical error culminates in his statement that the "absolute idol of reason,,30 is the objective principle of the universe. By emphasizing the negativity of the mind, Hegel's philosophical system corresponds, according to Schlegel, to Lord Byron's poetic description of Lucifer. Thus, Hegel's system constitutes the peak of a mislead Idealism, which will at last enthrone the absolute "evil
23 See: KA 8, 593. 24 KA 8, 594. 25 For Schlegel's and Hegel's 'mutual destruction' (Wechselvernichtung) cf. E. BEHLER: "Friedrich Schlegel und Hegel", in: Hegel-Studien, 2 (1963), pp. 241250. 26 KA 8, 595. 27 Ibid. 28 KA 10, 15. 29 Ibid. 30 KA 10, 16.
14
-------------
SCHLEGEL'S THEORY OF HISTORY spirit of negativity and contradiction, [... ] although being absolutely obscure, in the midst of a confused system,,31.
II. 'The Idea of the Vivid Word': Rhetorical Anthropology as a Basis of Schlegel's Theory of History Schlegel designed his new Philosophy ofLife as an answer to the fragmentation of human consciousness which he observed in systems of Idealism. He sought for a spiritual and comprehensive restitution of man's consciousness within a Christian framework, in particular for a "restitution of the lost divine inlage in mankind"32. Schlegel's philosophy does not only aim at an inner 'rebirth' and vivification of the individual consciousness, but also at a new perspective on the history of mankind. Consequently, the Philosophy of History forms the core of Schlegel's new departure in philosophy. Within a new spiritual perspective, the history of the world is interpreted as a permanent revelation of the 'lively spirit' and 'personal god,33. By overcoming the gulf between reason and imagination, philosophy will be able to reestablish the contact with historical life. This is the reason why in Schlegel's opinion human language is a product not only of reason, but also of imagination. While reason is responsible only for the logical and grammatical structure of language, its "whole figural and pictorial portion,,34 - is created by imagination. In this way Schlegel rehabilitates the figurative aspects of human language, which had traditionally been treated by rhetorical elocutio-theory. The restitution of the original connection between reason and imagination eventually lead Schlegel to a rhetorical anthropology and a Philosophy ofthe Word, on which his whole theory of history depends. Thus, the "original miraculous high dignity"35 of man is based on the principle of the vivid word. "Man is [... ] the spirit to whom - in contrast to all other beings - the word,
31 32 33 34 35
KA KA KA KA KA
10, 17. 10,3. 10,56. 10,41. 10, 339f.
15
PETER L. OESTERREICH the explaining, describing, controlling, mediating and even the commanding word - is being granted, imparted or transferred to.,,36 Relying on the "idea of the word,,37 and rejecting all rationalistic reductions, in which man was defined as a mere animal rationale, Schlegel emphasizes the original and mutual "link between speaking and thinking"38. By regarding man as a creature of the vivid word, Schlegel revives and continues the tradition of rhetorical humanism which had emphasized the original unity of ratio and oratio. This means that human knowledge in general depends on both discursive and pictural language through which reason and imagination are necessarily connected. In this context Schlegel generalizes an argument, which Hamann, in his Metacritique about the Purism ofReason39 , had already brought forth against Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. In Schlegel's version this argument runs as follows: By ignoring the basic connection between reason and language, the speculative philosophers of pure reason deny human limitations and pointlessly try to achieve an "inhuman (unmenschliches)"40, absolute knowledge. Schlegel, on the contrary, aspires to restitute the imaginary faculty of language and its central position in human knowledge and existence. By focussing on the vivid reality of the word he goes beyond the limits of a logical theory, which would restrict language to the propositional aspect of judgement. Schlegel's theory of the word focuses on the performative qualities of speech. In his lectures about the Philosophy ofHistory the philosopher underlined the performative richness of the word, which is familiar to us through our "own experience and from life itself,41. In all the different hermeneutic, didactic, erotic, imperative and poetic performances the word appears as a
36 Ibid. 37 KA 9,29. 38 KA 10,350. 39 In his Metacritique about the Purism of Reason from 1784 Hamann critizised Kant's 'pure reason' as an artificial and fictitious product resulting from three 'purifications': First the 'purification' of consciousness from tradition and faith, secondly from experience and thirdly from language. (See: lG. HAMANN: Schriften zur Sprache, ed. by J. SIMON, Frankfurt a.M. (Suhrkamp) 1967, p. 222.) 40 See: KA 10, 42. 41 KA 9, 30.
16
SCHLEGEL'S THEORY OF HISTORY "vivid effective power,,42. As such it is a persuasive and practical force in human life and culture. Thus the word has a double position in relation to history. First, the vivid word is a positive fact of our first-hand experience in human life and an event with occurs in real history. "The vivid by communicated, real by articulated word is not only a dead faculty, but a matter of fact, something historically real and given."43 In this way the word is both a medium of tradition and an object of historical investigation. Secondly, the vivid word is not only medium and object but also - and this is fundan1ental of Schlegel's theory of history - the subject and formative principle of history. Allegorically speaking it is "the original root,,44 of the all historical knowledge and human tradition. The underlying principle of Schlegel's Philosophy of History is neither economic nor political power, but the convincing force of the vivid word. Expressed in theological terms Schlegel gives his rhetorically conceived principle of the divine word a particular Christian ring. The motto of his Philosophy of History alludes to Genesis and the prologue of St. John's Gospel: "In the beginning man got the word, and this word was from God."45 In Schlegel's view the vivid word, which is the formative principle of world history, has a divine origin. The arrangement of Schlegel's universal history corresponds to this fundamental idea of the principle of the divine word and man's creative power by presenting the history of mankind as a Historia tripartita. The plan of a gradual and "general restitution in world history,,46 includes the three ages of the 'word', the 'power' and the 'light'. The first 'epoch of the word' comprises the history of the first revelation of the divine word as well as its degeneration and corruption that was responsible for the splitting of mankind into many nations. Referring to the Chinese, Indian, Egyptian, Hebrew, Greek and Roman cultures, Schlegel characterizes the second 'epoch of power' as the revival of the word. The 'third epoch of light' shows how the original truth of the divine word expanded. It stretches from the Germanic migrations,
42 43 44 45 46
KA 9, 29f. KA 9,29. Ibid. KA 9, 30. KA 9, 3.
17
PETER L. OESTERREICH the Middle Ages, the Reformation, the Enlightenment and the French Revolution to Schlegel's time. Schlegel's Philosophy of History follows the historical logic of the Philosophia perennis, as does Schelling's Philosophy of the Weltalter. 47 The history of mankind is conceived of as a story of creation, degeneration, successive revival and the eventual restitution of the lost divine truth. As an example of the "romantic revival of the Philosophia perennis,,48 Schlegel's historical thinking incorporates, in the cyclic form of its universal history, the typical Romantic attempt at overcoming the linear progression in history which the Enlightenment had postulated. Furthermore, the specific connection of rhetoric and Christian theology is significant of Schlegel's own philosophical position. By developing the fundamental idea of the vivid word he revived the tradition of rhetorical humanism and Luther's theology of the word. 49
III. 'The Irony of Love': The Three Basic Rules of Conjectural Historiography In his presentation of human history in his lectures about the Philosophy of History, Schlegel adhered to his own concept of narrative historiography. Again, Schlegel brought history into contact with rhetoric. He opposed the closed form of an apodictic system by using the open conjectural style of historical thinking that he himself preferred. It is not the completeness of logical consequences, which forms the core of Schlegel's historiographical concept, but the "historical course (der historische Gang)" 50, which leads to a real understanding of history as a whole. His philosophy of history is a prod-
See: W. SCHMIDT-BIGGEMANN: Philosophia perennis. Historische Umrisse abendliindischer Spiritualitiit in Antike, Miltelalter und Friiher Neuzeit, Frankfurt a.M. (Suhrkamp) 1998, pp. 646ff. 48 Loc. cit., p. 702. 49 See: A. GRUN-OESTERREICH, PETER L. OESTERREICH: "'Dialectica docet, rhetorica movet: Luthers Reformations der Rhetorik", in: P.L. OESTERREICH, TH.O. SLOANE (Eds.): Rhetorica movet. Studies in Historical and Modern Rhetoric in Honour ofHeinrich F. Plett, Leiden/Boston/Koln (Brill) 1999, pp. 25-41. 50 KA 9, 341. 47
18
SCHLEGEL'S THEORY OF HISTORY uct not of apodictic but of conjectural reason. 51 In Schlegel's view historiography follows three basic rules which are modelled after the system of classical rhetoric and according to which a story (narratio) should exemplify the three virtues of brevity (brevi/as), perspicuity (perspicuitas) and probability (probabilitas).52 The first basic rule is concerned with the invention of historical contents. This rule is an equivalent to the rhetorical principle of brevitas, which demands the clear-cut shortness of a narration. The presentation of universal history requires a methodical selection of the seemingly immeasurable historical material. From the boundless "ocean of singular historical knowledge,,53 one still has to select the important facts. The second basic rule is related to the arrangement of the historical contents or the form of the 'historical course': "One need not explain everything."54 This second rule asks for the historiographical courage of leaving a gap in matters which are not so important. This does not question the narrative virtue of clearness at all, because a lack in detail will not hurt the recipient's understanding of the whole. On the contrary, Schlegel points out that an attempt of falsely applying mathematical exactness and completeness to history would lead to "arbitrary and forced hypotheses" 55, which would jeopardize the whole enterprise. The third basic rule is concerned with probability as a narrative virtue: One must not reject things as impossible or improbable which seem "alien or miraculous at first sight"56. The third rule calls for the acknowledgment of the 51
52
53 54 55 56
For the concept of conjectural reason (konjekturale Vernunft) in context with Aristotle's Rhetoric see: O.K. MAINBERGER: Rhetorica I, Aristoteles. Cicero. Augustinus, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt (Fromman-Holzboog) 1987, pp. 15-260. In his metaphysics Nicolaus Cusanus strongly emphasised the role conjectural knowledge., which corresponds to the human mind and its world. "Coniecturalis itaque mundi humana mens forma exstitit uti realis humana" (N. DE CUSA: De coniecturis/Mutmaj3ungen, ed. by 1. KOCH, W. HAPP, I-Ianlburg [Felix Meiner] 21988., p. 6). See: M.F. QUINTILIANUS: Ausbildung des Redners. Zwolf Biicher/lnstitutionis oratoriae libri XII, ed. by H. RAHN, vol. 1, Darmstadt (Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft) 1972, pp. IV, 31. KA 9, lIt: KA 9., 14. Ibid. KA 9, 38.
19
PETER L. OESTERREICH historical otherness. In discussing it Schlegel recalls his early critique of the historical-critical method. In the Atheniium fragment 25 the young Schlegel had caricatured this method by ascribing to it a 'postulate of commonness' (Postulat der Gemeinheit) and an 'axiom of mediocrity' (Axiom der Gewohnlichkeit): "Postulate of commonness: Everything great, good and beautiful is improbable, because it is exceptional, and at least suspicious. Axiom of mediocrity: The way it is with us and around us, it must have been everywhere, because it is all so natural and normal."57 Surveying the realm of human history in his third basic rule, the late Schlegel again warns us against the fallacy of generalising one's own particular consciousness. Thus Schlegel's late Philosophy of History, with its acknowledgment of the otherness of history and the plurality of historical worlds, is also influenced by the figure of irony. Its urban and tolerant spirit protects the human consciousness from all sorts of wrong and one-sided claims of absoluteness. "The true irony ... is the irony of love.,,58 It is the figure of the irony of love, which ties together the idea of divine infinity with the finiteness of the contingent and conjectural human spirit. The irony of love, which moulds the historiographical style of Schlegel's late Philosophy of History, differs from his early romantic figure of 'infinite irony'. The young Schlegel had extended the rhetorical tropus (ironia verbi) to the figures of the unlimited irony of life (ironia vitae) and the irony of being (ironia entis), defining these 'infinite ironies' as the "freest of all licences"S9: They enable man to experience human existence as a "permanent change of self-creation and self-destruction"60 and as an "uninterrupted chain of inner revolutions"61. The young Schlegel, however, was already aware of the dangers of such an infinite ironic regress. Using irony in an extreme and infinite way can ultimately lead to its self-destruction. Its unhindered application can bring about the fatal situation of ending up as prisoner of one's own irony. One cannot "escape from irony again".62 Eventually the infinite extension of irony
57 KA 2, 149. 58 KA 10, 460. 59 KA 2, 160. 60 KA 2,172. 6] KA 2,255. 62 KA 2, 369.
20
SCHLEGEL'S THEORY OF HISTORY will evoke the desperate question: "Which gods will save us form all these ironies?" The answer of Schlegel's late philosophy lies neither in proclaiming the gods ofa New Mythology nor in the expectation ofa 'coming God'.63 It is to be found in the personal and living God of Christianity, who has revealed his goodness in real history and is able also to rescue man from the existential precipice of infinite irony. Thus Schlegel's Christian and spiritual tum is the reason for the metamorphosis from infinite to loving irony which can be observed in his work. The new spiritual seriousness suspends the pure poetical concept of infinite irony, which "sublimely hovers over the whole work and everything else, even the whole universe"64. In Schlegel's late philosophy the figure of irony does no longer rule unrestrictedly. In addition to the seriousness of spiritual love, which excludes a materialistic or atheistic interpretation of universal history, irony looses its radical negativity. It rather assumes a positive and conciliatory character. The early romantic concept of "the indissoluble conflict of the unconditioned and the conditional,,65 has become more moderate. The new loving irony will not destroy the idea of the infinite; it will, on the contrary, "contribute to her confirmation and reinforcement"66. Schlegel's late Philosophy of History is thus marked by a spirituallimitation of principle of irony. In the presentation of history the scope of irony is limited by the fundamental idea of a "restitution of the lost divine image in mankind"67. Therefore Schlegel's historiographical style can tropologically be described as a combination of negative irony and integrative synecdoche. 68 It becomes clear that the figure of the irony of love includes a negative as well as a positive element. In principle i'rony allows for a critical insight into the difference between a literary presentation of history and the manifold facts See: M. FRANK: Der kommende Gatt. Vorlesungen tiber die Neue Mythologie, Frankfurt a.M. (Suhrkamp) 1982. 64 KA 10, 447. 65 KA 2, 160. 66 KA 10,357. 67 KA 9,3. 68 For the connection between historiographical styles and rhetorical tropes see: H. WHITE: Metahistory. The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe, Baltimore & London (The Johns Hopkins University Press) 1973. 63
21
PETER L. OESTERREICH of historical reality. In this way, it permits a new Socratic "smiling of the spirit"69, which will leave behind the pose of 'anxious systematic omniscience' (angstliche systematische Allwissenheit).70 Viewed from the angle of an integrative synecdoche, however, all ironic contrasts will finally dissolve into the synthetical perspective "of a gradual approximation to the eternal truth,,71.
69 See: KA 10, 356. 70 See: ibid. 71 KA 10,474.
22
Chapter 2
History as the Control of Speculation: Schelling's Discovery of History and Baader's Critique of Absolute Historicity PETER KOSLOWSKI
I. II.
III.
German Idealism as Speculative Philosophy Transfiguration of Philosophy at its Highest Point into History: Schelling's Later Philosophy as History of Being Baader's Critique of German Idealism's Absolute Knowledge
The time of German Idealism is one of the most speculative epochs in the history of philosophy, possibly only comparable with the period of the great speculative systems of the philosophy of the later centuries of antiquity.
I. German Idealism as Speculative Philosophy In Hegel and the young Schelling, one finds an unbroken confidence that speculative thought is able to answer the most encompassing questions of metaphysics and that it can form a theory of totality that includes not only the present totality but also its genesis, the history of being. Schelling's system of identity and Hegel's dialectics of the absolute spirit are speculative theories of totality which claim to grasp not only the present being but also its genesis, its history. Schelling introduces the system of the identity of the absolute subject and the absolute object, of spirit and nature as the basic structure of the totality of being which is being-in-becoming. The world process and being are the becoming conscious of the subject or spirit at
PETER KOSLOWSKI the object or nature. All being, even the being of the absolute, is subjected to the process of becoming objective in time or history. Schelling's identity system of totality as the absolute subject-object was given further methodological foundation by the dialectical method which claimed that the logical judgment (Ur-teil) is the basic structure of reality. The totality of being is the ontological judgment in which the idea divides itself in nature and forms an ontological conclusion as the synthesis of the idea that returns in itself. The speculative schemes of the absolute identity of subject-object and of the absolute conclusion (absoluter SchlufJ) are not only logical but also ontological schemes. They describe the basic structure of the world. The genesis of being is the process of the self-objectivation of the absolute subject in Schelling and the conclusion of the absolute spirit in its synthesis with its otherness in nature in Hegel. World history is this process of the self-objectivation or of the self-conclusion of the absolute. The most general logical structure becomes here the most genera] ontological structure. The universality of logic seems to suppol1 the universal claim of speculative metaphysics. Logic becomes metaphysical and thereby most powerful. Logic creates the appearance of well-foundedness, of the scientific character of speculation based on it. In history and in its process of progress, God realizes himself as subject-object. Schelling explains: "The general world process rests on a universal progress of victories of the subjective over the objective although these victories are alternately always again contested. This victory, this progression is the password (Losungswort) of the universal movement whose representation is the science (die Wissenschaft)." I
F.W.J. SCHELLING: System der Weltalter. Munchener Vorlesung 1827/28 in einer
Nachschrift von Ernst von Lasaulx, herausgegeben und eingeleitet von Siegbert Peetz, Frankfurt am Main (Klostermann) 1990 (=SdW), p. 92.
24
HISTORY AS THE CONTROL OF SPECULATION
II. Transfiguration of Philosophy at its Highest Point into History: Schelling's Later Philosophy as History of Being There are, however, two objections to this logic of being and of history, one from the "logic of freedom", one from the logic of singular historical events. The objection from a philosophy of freedom is made by Schelling against himself in his Philosophical Inquiries into the Nature of Human Freedom (Philosophische Untersuchungen uber das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit) of 18092 in which he states for the first time that the development of the absolute can not be conceived to be a necessary progression but only a sequence of free acts of the absolute. The historical objection against himself he makes in his Ages ofthe World (Die Weltalter) of 1813. In his late philosophy, Schelling turns against Hegel's metaphysical logic and criticizes its only possible character, its character of describing only a structure of possibility lacking historical factualness. He criticizes the infinite lack of being and factualness (unendliche Mangel an Sein) in Hegel's system. He calls Hegel's metaphysical logic and dialectics "negative philosophy" that can only describe the possibility but not the facts of the development of the absolute in history.3 2 3
SCHELLING: Ages of the World, second draft of Die Weltalter (1813), Ann Arbor (University of Michigan Press) 1997 (=Ages). SCHELLING: Philosophie der Offenbarung. Erstes Buch. Einleitung in die Philosophie der Offenbarung, in: Schellings Werke, edited by M. Schroter, Sechster Erganzungsband Philosophie der Offenbarung. Erstes und zweites Buch 1858, Miinchen (C.H. Beck & R. Oldenbourg) 1954, Suppl.-Vol. VI, p. 75: The fact that Hegel and the philosophical rationalism are not fond of the word potentia demonstrates that in the purely aprioristic rational philosophy only the possibility of entities but not their reality is grasped. (DajJ Hegel und der Rationalismus udem Wort Potenz nicht geneigt sind", erinnert daran, HdajJ in der Vernunftwissenschaft, oder, was dasselbe ist, in der rein apriorischen Wissenschaji, nur die Moglichkeit der Dinge, nicht die Wirklichkeit begrifJen werden.") Schelling criticizes, ibid, p. 82, that "logical dogmatism which later on Hegel wanted to ground on the purely abstract notion and which is of all dogmatisms the most disgusting one since it is the most petty and narrow-minded one, whereas the dogmatism of the elder metaphysics has still something magnificent". (H... jener logische Dogmatismus, den spiiter Hegel auf den blojJ abstrakten Begrifj griinden wollte, der von allen der widerwiirtigste, wei! der
25
PETER KOSLOWSKI He criticizes further that Hegel's negative logic of the development of God, universe, and history does, neither correspond to the actual history of the world nor to the history of revelation of the absolute as it is narrated in the religions. Schelling sets out, from his Philosophical Inquiries into the Nature ofHuman Freedom of 1809 to his Philosophie der Offenbarung (Philosophy of the Revelation) of the year 1814 to 1854 to develop a positive philosophy that is able to incorporate as well the content and facts or world history as the content of the History of Revelation. Positive philosophy, in Schelling's view, must recount the actual history of the absolute as it is narrated in the mythological and religious tradition of humankind, a tradition in which the actual history of the development of the absolute is reflected. The development from mythology to the revealed religion of Christianity is for him not only the history of human imaginations about the absolute but the development of humankind and God in each other. The absolute is becoming itself in the historical stages of the mind of humankind. The history of mythology and Judaism towards Christianity is a history within history, a sort of higher history, a process of revelation of the absolute in itself, an Offenbarungsgeschichte, a "revealing/revealed history" and history of revelation, within the universal history.4 The history of revelation renders the religious revelation to be the central manifestation of the absolute within the
4
kleinlichste ist, wogegen der Dogmatismus der alten Metaphysik noch immer etwas Groj3artiges hat." See also ibid, p. 151. In contrast to this dogmatism of logic, Schelling wants to develop his positive philosophy and philosophy of revelation as "a metaphysical empirism" (ibid, p. 92). SCHELLING: Philosophie der OjJenbarung. Drittes Buch, in: Schellings Werke, edited by M. Schroter, Sechster Hauptband Schrifien zur Religionsphilosophie 1841-54, MUnchen (C.H. Beck & R. Oldenbourg) 1927, reprint 1965, vol. 6, p. 422: The content of the revelation in mythology and religion is a "higher history" (eine h6here Geschichte) and "supra-historical history" (ubergeschichtliche Geschichte), ibid, p. 612. - The Philosophy of Revelation is not a "revealed philosophy" (OjJenbarungsphilosophie), but a "philosophy of revelation" (Philosophie der OjJenbarung), a study of the factual documents of the historical revelaiion of the absolute in mythology and religion which form the object ofthis philosophy just as nature, art, history form the object of the philosophies of nature, art, and history respectively (loc. cit., Suppl.-Vol. VI, p. 139). The positive philosophy and philosophy of revelation is not a philosophy of history (Philosophie der Geschichte) but a historical philosophy (geschichtliche Philosophie) that follows the acts and actualization of the absolute in the higher history of revelation (ibid, p. 138f. footnote).
26
HISTORY AS THE CONTROL OF SPECULATION revelation to be the central manifestation of the absolute within the absolute's general nlanifestation in the universe. The objection from the point of view of freedom against the merely logical and speculative identity system is that the absolute cannot be totally dependent on the object. It must be free to accept being or not to accept it. The historical objection against logical speculation is that it is too universal, too general to explain the actual development of history. It does not justice to the historical events and epochs which are only stations on the way of the absolute to greater self-consciousness, instantiations of the one metaphysical speculative logic of history. In his Ages of the World, Schelling transforms philosophy into history to refute this objection against his speculative systenl. He states: "Science (Wissenschaft), according to the very meaning of the word, is history (historia) ... What is known is recounted, why can what is known of the highest science not be recounted as well, with the candidness and simplicity of everything else that is known? .. Can the philosopher never return to the sinlplicity of history, as did the divine Plato, whose entire work is dialectical throughout, but becomes historical at the summit and point of transfiguration?"s At its highest point, philosophy is transfigured into pure history. It tells the story of being from its beginning in indifference or non-being to its development of conscious being as subject-object. The identity system has grasped the aprioristic structure of world history but not its content and details. It is too general to reach the factual, the facts of the history of being. The identity system has described the process of being only as an aprioristic process and from the point of view of reason. It is, however, necessary to describe this process as a positive-historical one within philosophy.6 The historical, positive, and narrative philosophy - in contrast to the dialectical, merely rationalist, negative, and conclusive one - has the task to recognize history as the process or path in which the God of the beginning, the first being, das erste Wesen, who is above being assumes being. 7 Historical philosophy must make again this path of the absolute through history. It must make this path, which the absolute spirit passed in unconsciousness and which the finite human 5 6 7
Ages 113,114,119. SdW 93. SCHELLING: Einleitung in die Philosophie (1830), edited by Walter E. Ehrhardt, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt (frommann-holzboog) 1989 (=Schellingiana, vol. 10) (=Einl.), p. 104.
27
PETER KOSLOWSKI spirit does not remember, again in an anamnesis and recall this unconscious path to consciousness. 8 Philosophy becomes a history of the process of being, a recounting of the stages or ages of the world (Weltalter). Philosophy becomes a meta-history of history, a story above the stories of world history, a story of the ages through which the absolute assumes being and consciousness. For the philosophical method, this tum to history implies that the philosopher must apply the historical method. "Now, the philosopher finds himself in the same position as another historian. For to find what he wants to know, the latter must also question the testimony of old documents or the memory of living witnesses." Like the historian he needs "considerable skills and discernment, to glean pure facts out of the confusion of reports and to pry apart the true from the false and the authentic from the inauthentic in the available chronicles."9 The documents about the ages of the world for the philosopher as historian of being are the documents of the religions as Schelling later explains in his Philosophy Qf Revelation. Like the historian the philosopher must keep distance from his object: "He too urgently requires a separation from himself, a distancing from the present, an abandonment to the past, in order to free himself of the ideas and qualities particular to his time."IO Only in the synthesis of the philosophy of freedom and the philosophy of the ages of the world, the history of being (Seinsgeschichte) can be understood as what it is: the free self-revelation of the absolute. The history of being is not that necessary dialectical process that the early identity philosophy and Hegel's philosophy of the absolute spirit recount in the language of logic. The philosophy of the history of being recounts being in "a narrative, a history (Erzahlung) of that sequence of free actions by which God decided from eternity to reveal himself (sich zu offenbaren)."ll Revelation is the making of oneself apparent, the history of being is the process by which the absolute makes itself apparent and visible (offenbar). 8 Cf. Einl. 42 9 Ages 116. 10 Ibid. 11 SCHELLING: Die We/talter. Bruchstuck. Aus dem handschriftlichen NachlaB, 1814 (Schroter IV, 571-720), IV 645: "Phi/osophie ... eine Erziihlung jener Fo/ge freier Hand/ungen, durch we/che Gott von Ewigkeit beschlossen sich zu offenbaren." (Philosophy ... a narrative of that sequence of free acts by which God from eternity has decided to reveal himself)
HISTORY AS THE CONTROL OF SPECULATION Schelling distinguishes two concepts of revelation for his historical philosophy or philosophy of the history of being. Revelation is firstly the assumption of being by God (die Seinsannahme Gottes), God's revelation in the wider sense in creation and the process of nature or evolution. The sources for this history of being are the holy books of the religions, and the structure of this process is the identity of the absolute subject and object given by the identity system. Revelation is secondly the revelation of the Jewish-Christian religion as God's revelation in the narrower sense, as his personal revelation in recent history. The history of being as self-revelation of the absolute is not mere progress like in Hegel but a development to the higher stage by returning in itself and by partially retrograding. The fully developed historical philosophy is philosophy of revelation as the historical, positive, and narrative philosophy that recounts the path of God assuming being. 12 This philosophy is positive since it wants to reach the positive historical facts, the positivity of history, not only the negative logic of history, and strives, at the same time, to render the positive principle of history. It is as well historical empiricism as speculative idea of the principle of history. It is a twofold philosophy, a positive and negative, a historical and purely rational one: As positive philosophy it recounts the revelation of God in nature and in the empiricism of the documents of this process, the narratives of mythology and of the Jewish-Christian revelation and gives the theory of potencies in which being realized itself. As purely rational, dialectical, negative philosophy, it analyses the dialectics of being in a way close to that of traditional metaphysics. Schelling declares: "I want to give a theory of Christianity in the context of the great history of creation." 13 History is a revelation of its own kind and at the same tinle the continuation of God's revelation in nature. The historical philosophy of the Philosophy of Revelation includes and is the continuation
12 SCHELLING: Philosophie der Offenbarung. Drittes Buch. Der Philosophie der Offenbarung zweiter Theil, 1842/43 (Schroter VI, 389-726), p. 572. 13 SCHELLING: Urfassung der Philosophie der Offenbarung, 1831/32, zwei Teilbfu1de, herausgegeben von Walter E. Ehrhardt, Hamburg (Meiner) 1992 (Philosophische Bibliothek, Bd. 445 a und b), p. 17: "Ich will das Christenturn
im Zusammenhange mit der groj3en Geschichte von der Schopfung her darstellen."
29
PETER KOSLOWSKI of the philosophy of nature as the theory of God's revelation in nature, the continuation of Naturphilosophie. The cause for this continuation of the revelation in nature and its theory of philosophy of nature or Naturphilosophie in history and in its theory, the philosophy of history, is the fall of humankind. Original sin is the origin of history. God's original revelation or assumption of being would have happened without history: "In the human, the primordial principle of nature should have been transformed into spirit and freedonl - the natural life should have been the spiritual in the human.,,14 The empiricism of revelation gives the stages of the process of the development of consciousness: the stage of the mythologies of the different peoples represents the unfree development of consciousness in the stage of unconsciousness and distortedness of consciousness. The revelation in the narrow sense of Judaism and Christianity is the stage of the free development of consciousness. Mythology and religious revelation are the empirical sources for the history of the world ages as the disclosure or opening-up (ofJenbaren) of God's manifestation in being. Revelation as self-disclosure, self-evidencing, self-manifestation is not primarily an oral utterance or the sharing of information about truths of reason or reasonable truths. It is basically deed. The knowledge of this deed of self-manifestation is an empirical knowledge, not the understanding of a message. Revelation is, for Schelling, God's deed, not God's teaching. The philosophical recognition of the revelation, the philosophy of revelation (Philosophie der Offenbarung) is empirical and historical knowledge, not the obedience to a teaching or the believing of a message. Schelling renlains within the idea of German Idealism that absolute knowledge as knowledge of the absolute is possible, and that this absolute task is the goal of philosophy as the theory of the totality of being. He transforms this absolute knowledge into historical empiricism or historism which he also calls metaphysical empiricism by dividing philosophy in a genial way in a logical, dialectical and in a positive, historical part. Only the two sides of the angle that forms the system of philosophy, the historical, positive one and the logical, dialectical one, are able to give a complete knowledge of being. The claim to absolute knowledge and cognition of totality that Schelling's and Hegel's systems·ofphilosophy nlake presupposes in both systems that the philosopher can take a standpoint beyond and above being and history and, therefore, beyond and above God. For Schelling is the cognition of God the 14 Einl. 140
30
HISTORY AS THE CONTROL OF SPECULATION cognition of the greatest of all objects. The absolute is the greatest object as absolute subject-object. For being able to say this and to recognize the absolute as an object, the philosopher must have a standpoint and perspective beyond the absolute. This is by definition impossible since it would render the absolute relative, relative to an observer who has an even greater perspective. Goethe made a similar objection against the claim of the philosophy of history to be able to recognize history as a whole: There is no standpoint outside of history for humans from which they could perceive history as a totality. Therefore, philosophy of history as philosophy of the totality of history is impossible. It is impossible as the knowledge of a grand object, as the cognition of the object "totality of history". There might be the possibility of a theological-philosophical cognition of history as a whole but this knowledge can not proceed like the cognition of an oversized, ubergrof3es, object.
III. Baader's Critique of German Idealism's Absolute Knowledge Ranke held the opinion that Baader and Hegel "were, despite Baader's opposition against Hegel, of the same philosophical school, - only in different labyrinths."15 This judgment by Ranke does not hold philosophical scrutiny. Ranke underestimated the depth of Baader's criticism of German Idealism and overstated his proximity to Hegel. The central point of Baader's criticism of German Idealism is that Hegel and Schelling introduced the idea of the becoming absolute, of the God that is subjected to time and history himself and, therefore, a major change in the history of metaphysics. The temporality of the absolute renders the temporal and historical absolute. If even the absolute is historical history is total and all-encompassing, and there is no realm outside of the historical and temporal.
15 L. RANKE: Letter to Heinrich Ritter, 4th January 1828, in: Samtliche Werke, Vol. 53/54: Zur eigenen Lebensgeschichte, Leipzig (Duncker & HUITlblot) 1890, p. 185: "Was sagst Du zu der Opposition Franz Baader's gegen Hegel? Sie sind doch fast Einer Richtung, nur in verschiedenen Irrgarten." Vgl. auch D. BAUMGARDT: Franz von Baader undide philosophische Romantik, Halle (Max Niemeyer) 1927, p. 368.
31
PETER KOSLOWSKI By this totalization of the historical, the historicity of history itself that characterized traditional metaphysics is ended. Baader emphasizes that the spirit is not bound to time and space and therefore free of time and history .16 With the temporalization of the absolute and the n1aking absolute of historicity, German Idealism has changed ontology most deeply. The temporality or non-temporality of the absolute is the most central ontological decision (Grundentscheidung) philosophy can make. 17 Baader recognized this as the central ontological change that took place in his time and anteceded the later dominance of absolute historicity in evolution theory. Absolute historicity is opposed to the idea of a free origin of time in creation. German Idealisn1 understands the beginning of history as a fall of the absolute from itself, as an unfree beginning although Schelling in his later philosophy tries to reintroduce the freedom of the absolute. In the theological perspective, a beginning of the world in a fall of the absolute renders the world to be the consequence of a catastrophe or even sin. According to Baader, the idea of the world and of history in God's fall from himself makes the creation a sin that God should repent since creation is the consequence of his inability to control himself. The second consequence of the absoluteness of history is that history becomes the absolute court of judgment over the deeds of humankind and of human individuals. Hegel followed Schiller's statement that world history is the world's final judgment. In an ontology in which history is historical itself and the absolute independent of time and history, history is only a relative court of judgment and not the last court of appeal. Baader therefore corrects Hegel's and Schiller's statement to the proposition: World history is only a partial and subordinate court of judgment. 18 History is itself historical, and therefore its judgment not the one of a court without further appeal. 19
FRANZ VON BAADER: Societatsphilosophie, 1831/32, in: FRANZ VON BAADER: Samtliche Werke, ed. by F. Hoffmann et aI., Leipzig 1851-1860, reprint Aalen (Scientia) 1963, vol. 14, pp. 55-160 (=Societ.), vol. 14, p. 55. 17 Cf. FRANZ VON BAADER: ElementarbegrifJe uber die Zeit als Einleitung zur Philosophie der Societat und der Geschichte, 1831, in: Samtfiche Werke, loco cit., 14, 29-54 (=Elembgr.), vol. 14, p. 29. 18 Societ. 14, 68. 19 Or, as Leo Schestow has stated it, history is the unjust judge to whom, according to the passing on of Russian pilgrims, the fighting parties are forced to tum in pagan countries. LEO SCHESTOW: Athen und Jerusalem. Versuch einer religiosen
16
32
HISTORY AS THE CONTROL OF SPECULATION Hegel's world spirit or Weltgeist will be sitting, according to Baader, at the end of history on the ruins of world history in loneliness, and the rubble of history will be formed by the generations of humankind. 20 The philosophical proposition that history is historical and transient is only possible from a standpoint outside history which would allow the thinker to overlook the entirety of history and to recognize that it is temporal and historical and therefore transient itself. Baader is aware that this requires the theological view on history with the idea of an absolute being independent of time and being the lord of history. From this theological-philosophical perspective, the unity of history can be contended. In contrast, Hegel's and Schelling's claim that they possess a standpoint beyond history that would entitle them to a philosophy of history as a philosophy of the unity of history cannot be founded since they assume everything to be inside of history and since they have no point to look from on history from outside of it and on it as a whole. The idealist philosophy of history tries to develop a philosophy of the totality of history without having a standpoint outside of history. Its phi-
Philosophie, Graz (Schmidt-Dengler) 1938, p. 11: "Die Geschichte ist jener ungerechte Richter, an den, laut uberlieferung russischer Pilger, in heidnischen Liindern die streitenden Parteien sich zu wenden gezwungen sind. " 20 FRANZ VON BAADER: Societe 14, 112: "Wohin aber derlei monstrose und wirklich abominable Vorstellungen, falls sie consequent durchgefiihrt und nicht synkretistisch zum Theil wieder dissimi/irt werden, in der Philosophie der Geschichte fuhren, davon konnen Sie sich in Hegels Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts und in seiner dort aufgestel/ten Ansicht von der Weltgeschichte nach den von ihm angegebenen vier Epochen des orienta/ischen, des griechischen, des romischen und des germanischen Reichs uberzeugen. Eine Ansicht, welche eigentlich das Verhiiltniss des Schopfers zum Geschopf umkehrt (nemlich gegen die bisherigen Ansichten) indem die Philosophen und auch viele Theologen sonst Gott durch seine Einsamkeit und gleichsam Langeweile zur Schopfung sich bestimmen lassen, wogegen Hegel den Weltgeist, (man weiss nicht ob hierunter der Spiritus dei oder der Spiritus mundi immundi gemeint ist) von unten herauf auf Kosten seiner Geschopfe und durch aile ihre Gebrechen hindurch sich hinauf arbeitet, hiedurch immer mehr zu sich seiber kommt und sich als Geist substantialisirt, so dass dieser Weltgeist oder Gott nur nach zuruckgelegter siimmtlicher Weltgeschichte, und iiber dem Schutt untergegangener und von ihm mit Recht fallen gelassener Weltepochen und Katastrophen und aller hiezu an die Reihe gekommener Volker und Individuen endlich absolut einsam und ohne alles Geschopfzuriick bleibend seine Absolutheit zu erreichen vermochte."
33
PETER KOSLOWSKI losophy is a myth and "theology" of history that has no narrative framing the narrative of world history. The older theological interpretation of the beginning of history in original sin and the fall of humankind in Jewish and Christian religion as well as the myth of the Golden Age in mythology that anteceded the historical age can distinguish between pre-historical and historical time and give historical time a unity that is encircled by non-historical "time". Idealism that conceives only a beginning of history and no end of it can give no principle of unity of history. It is logically impossible to reconcile the idea of the unity of history with the idea of the absoluteness of history. If history is absolute it can not have an end, and might also be very likely, against Hegel and Schelling, that it has no beginning. The absoluteness of history presupposes its eternity. An eternal history might in tum be another contradictio in adiecto. If history has no end it has no unity. The totalization of history is only possible without a teleology of history. A blind or contingent beginning of history implies also a blind and contingent end of history or even no end at all. Hegel's philosophy of the absolute spirit and of world history is a theory of the contingent beginning of history in the fall of the absolute which nevertheless states that history is the realization of freedom and that humans are able to reconcile themselves with the path of history - both statements that are not justified by Hegel's theory about the beginning of history. Hegel takes an intermediate position between the Christian theory of original sin and the big bang theory of the beginning of history: God himself falls and, thereby, originates the world. The fall of the idea from itself implies a fall of the absolute and therefore a being of the absolute before this fall, but it is only this fall that brings the absolute to real existence. The Hegelian Erdmann rightly pointed to the fact that this idea of Hegel is basically Gnostic and reproduces the idea of the fall of the Sophia in Gnosticism on the level of a supposedly logical theory.21 In both, the Gnostic and the Hegelian, theory of the absolute it is unclear why an absolute the falls will nevertheless return into itself and reach its accomplishment. The return of the spirit into itself (Zusichkommen des
21
Among the Hegelians, JOHANN EDUARD ERDMANN is probably the only one who openly acknowledged the similarity between Hegel and the Gnostics in the idea of the fall of the Godhead from itself. Cf. 1.E. ERDMANN: Natur oder Schopfung? Eine Frage an die Naturphilosophie und Religionsphilosophie, Leipzig (F.Chr.W. Vogel) 1848, p. 112. Gnosticism assumes, however in contrast to Hegel, that not the whole Godhead falls.
34
HISTORY AS THE CONTROL OF SPECULATION Geistes) implies a teleology that is not granted by the origin of the spirit in a fal1. 22 The other objection made by Baader against Hegel and Schelling commences from the idea of a person. Baader develops a personalist critique of the idea of personality in the Idealist philosophy of history. If the personality of the absolute is rejected and the philosophical position taken that the absolute is in an infinite historical development, the concept of the human person becomes unclear as well. The progressism of an infinite historical development or progress excludes the possibility of an accomplished gestalt of a person. Personality is always sublating herself in the theory of permanent sublation, but never achieving a finite gestalt. The other objection from the concept of a person concerns the idea of nature. The person does not sublate (aujheben) nature or the real in herself into spirit but conserves nature in herself. The person remains nature and spirit, a real and an ideal being. She is not transformed or sublated into spirit. In the complete person, there are spirit and nature. A philosophy of history is only possible with the idea of original sin which divides the historical from the non-historical era. This connection was also understood by Hegel and urged him to reinterpret original sin as the fall of the absolute from itself. The beginning of the world coincides with the beginning of history in Hegel's thinking which leads to the equation of being and history. Such a beginning in contingency excludes a teleology of history since the te/os or goal of history cannot be warranted by a purely contingent process. Hegel's philosophy of history is a "big bang theory" of the origin of history with a teleological concept of history leading to acconlplishment in freedom. The empiricism of history is the control principle of speculation for Baader and the late Schelling. The historian's empirical objection and the theologian's objection from the empiricism of historical religion against the speculative systems are closely connected since· both, the historian and the theologian, claim that philosophical speculation must yield primacy to the factual and that philosophy must subject its speculative systems to the empirical test or authority of the facts of history. As Johann Georg Hamann con-
22 A similar problem faces the utopian end of history in Marx's dialectical materialism. Why should a process that produced alienation be able to be overcome to a state of total sublation and end of alienation?
35
PETER KOSLOWSKI tended23 , experience and history are the authority or the law court for speculative thinking. Schelling tried to follow him in this in his Philosophy ofRevelation. 24 Schelling, however, fell from one extreme into the other, from the pure theory of the system of identity into the pure history of the philosophy of revelation which just retells the story of the narratives of mythology and revelation. Between Hegel's absolute theory of metaphysical logic and the late Schelling's absolute empiricism of revelation history, German Idealism seems to have been incapable to find a balance between theory and empirical fact and to fall either in the historicism of absolute logic or in the historicism of the history of the self-revelation of the absolute. Baader summarized this situation in 1833 as follows: "When today Hegel keeping himself within the negativity (of pure logic, insertions by P.K.) was not able to come to the concreteness of (material) content and (logical) form he was however closer to the solution of the sole problem of philosophy than those who although they put forward the theory of the identity of subject and object cannot conceal their inability to grasp this concreteness (or identity). They believe to conceal this inability by keeping hold of the abstract empiricism, the history as such, within the speculation (or theory) and, according to them, as positive element in speculation." Baader agrees with Philip Marheineke in his critique of Schelling. Schelling fails to understand that revelation
SCHELLING: Phi/osophie der Offenbarung, loc. cit., Suppl.-Vol. VI, p. 172, quotes Hamann that we know by the authority of our senses, and not by reason, that things exist outside of ourselves. See on Hamann also Philosophie der Offenbarung, loco cit., vol. 6, p. 4 I6. 24 SCHELLING: Philosophie der Of!enbarung, loco cit., Suppl.-Vol. VI, p. 61 f.: Experience is the control of the speculation of reason: "Denn eben wei! es das Seyende ist, was die Vernunftwissenschaft a priori begreift oder construirt, mujJ 23
ihr daran gelegen seyn, eine Controle zu haben, durch welche sie darthut, dajJ das, was sie a priori gefunden, n i c h t eine Chimiire ist. Diese Controle ist die Erfahrung. { ..} Die Vernunftwissenschaft hat also die Erfahrung nicht zur Que II e, wie die ehemalige Metaphysik sie zum Theil zur QueUe halte, wohl aber hat sie die Erfahrung zur Begleiterin. Auf diese Weise hat die deutsche Philosophie den Empirismus, dem aile anderen europiiischen Nationen nun seit einem Jahrhundert ausschliejJlich huldigten, selbst in sich, ohne darum Empirismus zu seyn."
36
HISTORY AS THE CONTROL OF SPECULATION is not a history like any other history.25 Rather, it still has to be proven that the revelation of religion is history. A full system of philosophy must be speculative and historical, rational and empirical. It cannot be speculative only or historical and narrative only. The late Schelling is, according to Baader, too servile to the historical and empirical. Those as Schelling who contend that philosophy must be transfigured into history "are not aware of the fact that the servility of an empiricism that looses itself in the subject matter is as bad as the liberalism of abstract theory that has fled the matter. But this exaggerated or forced standing of history in philosophy corresponds only to that forced position which Schelling gives recently, as we have seen, the son of God, i.e. God himself as being subjected to history.,,26 "Forced and unnatural standing of history" iforcierte Stellung der Geschichte) is a striking description of the absolute historicity in German Idealism. There is an element of overhistorization in Hegel and Schelling which derives from their historization of the absolute and the absolutization of the historical. The reminder that history can only be history if it is itself historical and not absolute is the contribution of Baader's philosophical critique of Hegel's speculative logic and Schelling's transfiguration of philosophy into history. It precedes the critique of 19th century's historiography and theory of historiogPH. MARHElNEKE: Zur Kritik der Schellingschen Ojfenbarunsgsphilophie, Berlin (Th. Chr. Fr. Enslin) 1843,reprint Frankfurt am Main (Minerva) 1983, p. 29. 26 FRANZ VON BAADER: Ueber den Begriff der Zeit und die vermittelnde Function der Form oder des Maasses (1833), in: Siimtliche Werke, loco cit., vol. 2, pp. 517-534, here p. 530: "Wenn nun Hegel inner der Negativitiit sich hal/end freilich zu dieser Concretheit des lnhaltes und der Form nicht selbst kommen konnte, so war er doch der Losung dieses alleinigen Problems der Philosophie niiher, als diejenigen, welche, obschon sich zur Identitiitslehre des Subjects und Objects bekennend, ihr Unverm6gen, diese Concretheit zu erfassen, damit zu verheimlichen meinen, dass sie die abstracte Empirie (Historie) als sol c h e in der Speculation festhalten wollen, wie sie sagen als positives Element derselben, nicht bedenkend, dass der Servilismus der in die Sache versenkten Empirie ebenso schlecht ist, als der sachfluchtig gewordene Liberalismus der abstracten Theorie. Aber diese forcirte Stellung der Historie in der Philosophie entspricht freilich jener forcirten Stellung, die Schelling neuerlich, wie wir gesehen haben, dem Sohne Gottes, d. i. Gott Selbst als der Geschichte unterworfen gibt. "
25
37
PETER KOSLOWSKI raphy on Hegel. Both approaches, Baader's personalist philosophy and the historians' historical theory of history, opposed the absolute historicity assumed in German Idealism. Baader's, Ranke's and Droysen's critique of German Idealism's "forced understanding of history" made visible that the historical standpoint is not identical with the historization of all being and even the absolute or with the totalization or absoluteness of the historical. The historical is not absolute but in itselfhistorical. 27
27 C£ to Baader and Schelling also P. KOSLOWSKI: Philosophien der O.ffenbarung. Antiker Gnostizismus, Franz von Baader, Schelling, Paderbom, MUnchen, ZUrich, Wien (F. Schoningh) 2nd ed. 2001.
38
PartB
The Theory of History in German Historism
Chapter 3
Leopold von Ranke HELMUT BERDING
1. II. III.
Religious Historicism: Every Epoch is Immediate to God Claim to Objectivity In the Name of History: Historical and Political Conservatism
I. Religious Historicism: Every Epoch is Immediate to God Leopold von Ranke counts among the greatest of historians. His History ofthe Popes, History ofthe Reformation in Germany, History ofFrance, and History of England - to name only the best known of his great works - are classics. In view of his enormous historiographical work, which comprises fifty-four volumes, to which the nine volumes of Universal History are added, Ranke counts far and away as the "greatest German historian," and achieved with enormous creative force and great depictive power a literary accomplishment of the highest rank. With reference to the historical-theoretical content and the methodical principles of his historical writing, Ranke is often called the "father of the objective writing of history" or the "founder of the science of history." Although such acclamations may be fundamentally problematic, Ranke is undoubtedly a central figure in the German discipline of history. He decisively influenced historical-political thought in Germany in the nineteenth century. Occupation with his works has been called, with complete justification, "a decisive part of the self-reflection of German historiography." 1 It also leads to the foundations of our contemporary discipline of history. D.
GERHARD:
Deutsche Literarische Zeitung, 1927, col. 2060 (review of L. V.
RANKE: Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation, Akademie Edition,
HELMUT BERDING
Ranke accomplished the decisive act in the development of German historical thinking by applying the idea of individuality to the political world, "which may perhaps be called Ranke's boldest intellectual achievement.,,2 Ranke explained the interpretation of historical individuality - which had already been prepared by Herder and radicalized by romanticism - with all of its postulates of originality, analytical irreducibility, and creative freedom: "The real-mental, which suddenly stands before the eyes in unanticipated originality, cannot be derived from any higher principle. From the particular, one can carefully and boldly move up to the general; from the general theory, there is no way of looking at the particular.,,3 In this proposition from the Political Conversation, Erich Rothacker saw "the most radical formulation of historicism that I know.,,4 Ranke's idea of individuality is based on assumptions conditioned by his ancestry, the kind of education, and the general, basic, religious-philosophical views of his time. He was born into a devout Protestant family, in which the heritage of a long line of Protestant intellectuals was alive. His father became a lawyer, but without giving up the unshakable Lutheran religiosity of his forefathers. As a lawyer and owner of a small piece of land, he belonged to the persons of rank of the small Thuringian country town of Wiehe on the Unstrut, where Leopold Ranke was born in 1795 (1886 t). From this smalltown remoteness, still untouched by the intellectual and social shocks of the tum of the century, Ranke entered the Saxon Prince's School of Pforta ("Schulpforta"). The Lutheran spirit of his parents' home also encircled him here. In addition to classical philology, Christian theology dominated the teaching. Ranke further developed the seeds of Schulpforta during his study of philology and theology at the Universities of Leipzig and Halle from 1814 to i 818. He appeared to return into the theologian's world of his ancestors.
2 3 4
ed. P. Joachimsen), cited from R. VIERHAUS: Ranke und die soziale Welt, MUnster (Aschendorff) 1957, p. 1. T. SCHIEDER: "Das historische Weltbild L.v. Rankes", in: Begegnungen mit der Geschichte, Gottingen (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht) 1962, p. 117. L. V. RANKE: Samtliche Werke (Ranke's collected works, 54 vols., Leipzig (Dunker & Humblot) 1867-90, vol. 49/50, p. 325. E. ROTHACKER: "Savigny, Grimm, Ranke: Ein Beitrag zur Frage nach dem Zusammenhang der Historischen Schule", Historische Zeitschrift, 128 (1923), p. 437.
42
LEOPOLD VON RANKE If Ranke was led more strongly by historical than by systematictheological questions, especially in dealing with the original texts of Luther, this was certainly not because of a lack of faith. Reception - transmitted through Fichte - of the Platonic-Neoplatonic idea that the world is the representation, the phenomenon, the external existence of the divine idea was decisive for his gradual approach to history. The infinite Divine, existing in itself - Luther's "deus absconditus" - which evades direct human knowledge, expresses and realizes itself in historical humanity and reveals itself through history. This becomes the hieroglyphic of God, and dealing with the concrete historical phenomenon becomes the religious perception of the Deity: "God dwells, lives, and is to be recognized throughout history ... each moment preaches his name, but most of all ... the context of the great history ... that we for our part reveal this holy hieroglyphic! ]n this way we also serve God .... "5 In such ways of thinking we can glimpse the first stimulus to Ranke's conception of history. History, together with its academic apparatus, which ultimately serves the knowledge of God with the establishment of facts, receives religious inspiration, "which, for Ranke, as the descendent of a line of devout Lutheran pastors, it requires .... "6 With his conception of the unity of the divine idea and human history, Ranke stood in full agreement with the basic historical-theological views of thinkers from Lessing to Schelling and Hegel. As Carl Hinrichs has demonstrated in detail, the "historical theology of the age of Goethe" is the great, universal, epoch-dependent factor of Ranke's historical writing. Its "principal and general thesis"? - "Everything is universal and individual spiritual life"g - expresses indeed Ranke's belongingness to the historical theology of the time of Goethe; it says nothing, however, about his position within this monstrous, broad, idealistic, total concept, which branched out widely in conflicting directions. The intellectual-historical place and the systematic meaning of Ranke's theory of history become clearer, only when one considers his dispute with Hegel's philosophy of history and with the historical empiricisnl of, above all, Barthold Niebuhr. 5 6 7
8
Samtliche Werke, vol. 53/54, pp. 89-90. C. HINRICHS: Ranke und die Geschichtstheologie der Goethezeit, Gottingen (Muster-Schmidt) 1954, pp. 113-14. F. MEINECKE: Die Entstehung des Historismus (Werke, Vol. II), Ivlunich (Oldenbourg) 1959, p. 592. Samtliche Werke, vol. 14/15, IX.
HELMUT BERDING Ranke's extraordinarily complex relationship to Hegel 9 was governed by the historian's aversion to the philosopher's speculative and systematic process of "deriving" the particular from the universal by means of the dialectical method. Every attempt to comprehend the historical process from the logic of its laws of motion inevitably has the consequence, for Ranke, that the particular loses its "independent life" and degrades "all human persons" to mere "shadows and shavings." 10 The idea of progress - that "in each epoch the life of humanity elevates itself to a higher level, that consequently each generation completely surpasses the previous one, and thus the latest one is favored, while the preceding generations were only the bearers of the following generations" - contains "an injustice to the Deity."ll Ranke reinterpreted the Hegelian dialectic of the inter-penetration of the universal and the particular as a fixed relationship of dependence. Notwithstanding his claims and self-understanding, Hegel approaches a vulgar Enlightenment philosophy and is accused of "scholasticism," in which "life perishes."12 Ranke's "historically active religiosity," or "religious historicism,"13 first receives its specific historical character in its opposition to the undialectically interpreted philosophy of history of the Hegelian School. Ranke reduced his concept of the originality of historical individuality to the classical formula of historicism: "Every epoch is immediate to God." It must be seen as something valid for itself, which has its value in its own existence and is not merely a transition stage in a process of development to a more complete state. From this perspective, the treatment of the individual life in history receives "a completely unique fascination." The task of the historian is to bring to light, first, "the particular tendency" and the "distinctive ideal" that each epoch possesses and, "secondly, also the difference between the individual epochs." In this way historical humanity in its entirety -
On the relationship between Ranke and Hegel, see especially E. SIMON: Ranke und Hegel, Munich (Oldenbourg) 1928. See also T. STEINBOCHEL: "Ranke und Hegel", in: GrofJe Geschichtsdenker, Tiibingen (Wunderlich) 1949, pp. 173..215. 10 L.v. RANKE: Ober die Epochen der neueren Geschichte, Historical-Critical Edition, ed. T. Schieder and H. Berding, Munich (Oldenbourg) 1971, p. 64. 11 Ibid., p. 59. 12 Ibid., p. 64. 13 G. MASUR: Rankes Begriff der Weltgeschichte, Munich (Oldenbourg) 1926, p. 61.
9
44
LEOPOLD VON RANKE
the divine idea in its full richness comes into view. 14 By their direct relation to the divine, the individual epochs stand in a universal-historical relationship. They are also connected to one another by "an inner necessity of succession"; they are tied to one another "according to laws[!] that are unknown to us, more mysterious and greater than one imagines." 15 Thus, for Ranke, history does not dissolve into a chaotic plurality of contextless phenomena. It is "not such an accidental state of nations and peoples rushing against one another, attacking one another, and succeeding one another,"16 as historicism, detached from the foundation of faith and conceived radically to the end, later saw it, which led thinking about history into the theoretical cul-de-sac of relativisnl. While all later historians failed in avoiding the relativistic consequences of the principle of individuality, Ranke's view found its completion in a very living faith in Providence. I7 And indeed, for Ranke, historical individuality was already not only the starting point and the foundation, but also the ultimate end of historical knowledge. He did place the individual life in a universal-historical context, but as a direct relation to the divine, which cannot be comprehended and historically transmitted. He indeed maintained the law-ordered connection of the various epochs to one another, but at the same time denied that the law of motion can be fathomed. Ranke's historical thought is not an understanding consciousness. According to his own words, it is "ultimately sympathy, joint knowledge of the universe." I8 Ranke, who was unable to accept Hegel's establishment of the unity of world history through the concept of spirit, but instead adhered to the idea of providential history, had to oppose the advocates of the historical schoo I, who, according to a remark of Wilhelm Dilthey, could establish "no relation to universal history." 19 While the philosophy of history puts the significance of the factual and the unique existence of the individual in the system to flight, in specific empirical research, as Niebuhr pursued it, the universal perishes. History as empirical science runs the risk of losing itself in the details. Therefore, one must combine Niebuhr's method of particular research 14 Uber die Epochen der neueren Geschichte, pp. 59 ff. Ibid., p. 67. 16 Samtfiche Werke, vol. 24, p. 93. 17 Cf. MASUR: pp. 66 ff. 18 Samtfiche Werke, vol. 53/54, p. 569. 19 W. OILTHEY: Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 7, Leipzig (Teubner) 1927, p. 99.
15
45
HELMUT BERDING with Hegel's tendency to the universal: "Only one who unites the empirical with idea can refer to the spirit. "20 According to Ranke's conception, uniting the empirical with the idea, or comprehending the individual event in its universal circumstance, is achieved by a specific historical kind of knowledge: understanding (Verstehen). The entirety of a process of development, the guiding tendency of an epoch, the dominant idea of a century, discloses itself to the historian in "divination," through "mental apperception." Through it one attains the view of the totalintellectual reality of an historical individuality.21 Therefore - if one follows Ranke - historical research defends itself with the help of understanding from the blindness of historical empiricism, which merely registers facts, and simultaneously liberates itself from the philosophy of history's compulsion to construction: "History itself, not a philosophy of history that interprets itself, is called and enabled to elevate itself from the investigation and consideration of the particular to a universal view of events, to the knowledge of an objective, present context.,,22 The science of history, if it wishes to hold its ground against philosophy as an autonomous academic discipline and not be demoted to the insignificance of positivistic empiricism, must understand itself as a hem1eneutic science. This conclusion, to be drawn from Ranke's critique of Hegel and Niebuhr, was shared by the historians of the nineteenth century almost without exception. Consequently, efforts to establish a theoretical foundation for the science of history - for instance with Johann Gustav Droysen, Wilhelm Dilthey, or Friedrich Meinecke - coincided to a great extent with philosophical hermeneutics. Ranke, who was no philosopher and never developed the theoretical foundations of his idea of history systen1atically, was unable to remove the concept of understanding "from the indefiniteness of aestheticpantheistic communion" and to formulate his conceptual presuppositions, as the more sharply thinking Droysen later attempted.23 For Ranke, understanding was a sort of intuitive comprehension of connections, and neither is capable of nor requires theoretical explanation, but is instead "based on an intellectuality that is present in each person, even if to 20 Cf. HINRICHS, pp. 106-7. 21 Cf. G. G. IGGERS: Deutsche Geschichtswissenschaft, Munich (dtv) 1971, pp. 1067. 22 Cited from STEINBUCHEL, pp. 187-88. 23 H. G. GADAMER: Wahrheit und Methode, Tiibingen (Mohr) 1960, p. 199.
46
LEOPOLD VON RANKE
highly unequal degrees.,,24 Consequently, understanding cannot be acquired methodologically. The central problem of historical knowledge is missing from the methodology of history. This remains restricted purely formally to the critical examination of the determination of facts, which must lead understanding and accompany it. Ranke is not completely innocent of the (profoundly anti-theoretical) attitude of many historians that attention to sourcecritical principles already guarantees the scientific character of history. What Ranke transmitted to the discipline of history, although in a formalmethodological respect, is fundamental for all serious historical research. Following Niebuhr's Roman History, Ranke made the discipline of history familiar with the critical method of grasping the meaning of sources. The methodological principles of the philological critique of sources, which aim at producing reliable texts, examining their authenticity, and distinguishing that which is independent from that which is derived, were brought to general acceptance by him. They have belonged ever since to every historian's set of tools: "For the critical investigation and confirmation of historical facts, Ranke's method of teaching was effective almost epochally in Germany.,,25 It also shaped the beginnings of academic history in the United States through his student George Bancroft, and was influential in England, especially through E. A. Freeman.
II. Claim to Objectivity The endeavor to attain the objectivity and universal validity of the statement, free of all subjective influences, is the most characteristic feature of Rankean writing of history. The explanation of this concern is the historian's universal-historical interest in discovery. Since, according to Ranke's historical-theological axiom, no epoch contains the divine and eternal completely, but instead that which is not possible in any individual period will happen in all time periods, Ranke had to have the development of the full measure of the life inspired by the Divinity in view, and thus did not let his perspective
24 Cf. IGGERS: op. cit. , p. 106. 25 Cf. H. v. SYBEL: "Gedachtnisrede auf Leopold von Ranke", Historische Zeitschrift, 56 (1886), pp. 463-81.
47
HELMUT BERDING be confined to any particular present interest. Ranke is supposed to have accomplished bringing the individual phases into view in empirical approximation by means of the source-critical method. Such an interpretation of the objective character of Rankean historical writing, derived from religious motivation, the universal-historical intention, and the formal historical method, can appeal to the demand for strict objectivity made again and again by Ranke himself. Already in his book Critique of Modern Historical Writing - which appeared as an independent supplement to his first work, Histories ofthe Latin and Teutonic Nations: 1494-/514 - Ranke did not assign history the role of "judging the past and telling the present generation how to improve the future," but instead of "merely telling how it really was.,,26 In the introductions to his main works, Ranke repeatedly demanded strict objectivity. His History of Prussia seeks to "represent events as objectively as possible, without concern for the party attachments and hostilities of the present day."27 His History of France has the goal of "attaining a view of the objective features of the great facts, beyond the opposing accusations of contemporaries and the often restricted view of later generations, through original and reliable sources of information."28 Finally, in his History of England, Ranke writes the famous and oft-cited sentence: "I wanted to extinguish, as it were, myself, and only to let the things talk, to let the powerful forces appear."29 Ranke's frequently misunderstood claim to objectivity and the objective character of his historical writing derived from it by his followers are subjected to harsh critique from all sides. Only two years after Ranke's death, Ottokar Lorenz thanked everyone "opposed to the offensive gossip about Ranke's so-called objectivity, that prejudice, which has fed the imbecility of many epigones."30 It is certainly easy to establish that Ranke's historical sphere and, consequently, also his endeavor for knowledge remained restricted, that he was not able to free himself from his political circumstances and social prepossessions, and that all these subjective conditions influenced his writing of history. Without doubt, the demand for objectivity and its realization diverge widely. Ranke, who was fully aware of this discrepancy, did 26 27 28 29 30
Samtfiche Werke, vol. 33/34, VII. Samtliche Werke, vol. 25/26, IX. Siimtliche Werke, vol. 8/9, VIII. Samtliche Werke, vol. 15, p. 103. O. LORENZ: Leopold von Ranke, Berlin (Hertz) 1891, p. 127.
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LEOPOLD VON RANKE
not understand his concept of objectivity absolutely: "I establish an ideal here, which I will be told is unrealizable. Once again, this is how it is: the idea is immeasurable; the achievement, by its very nature, limited."31 Ranke attributed the fact that the reality lags behind the ideal - in remarks that are certainly not well known - to both individually conditioned factors and the "influence of general life. "32 These reservations regarding the possibility of objective knowledge, which were obviously admitted only with regret and were nowhere expressed more carefully, do not essentially alter Ranke's conviction that the historian is quite capable of approaching the ideal of the objective representation of history, ifhe is guided by the will to objectivity, puts himself in the position of the object of his contemplation, and critically scrutinizes the correctness of the sources of the facts. The possibility of "objective" historical writing, therefore, is tied to a nlethod that includes a break with "all methods of rationalization and abstraction, of deriving things from conceptually comprehensible ideas,"33 in other words, the renunciation of a universal theory. The science of history is in fact subject to a methodological restriction, by which both the way of seeing and the way of thinking are limited and the interest in discovery is also steered in a particular direction. Wide regions of historical reality remain excluded from the contemplation of history, so that all objectivity is called into question by the very method that is supposed to guarantee it. The true problematic of Ranke's "objective" writing of history is found here, and not so much in the direct influence of the political in the narrower sense on his picture of history. Ranke's methodological principles and the ideas of historical objectivity derived from them have continued to be influential, while his concrete political convictions, which have likewise become effective historiographically, have met with less sympathy in the Gennanscience of history. Consistently with his methodological premises, Ranke started from the belief that the dominant tendencies or leading ideas of an epoch cannot be "proven, conceptually established," but can "only be described."34 For this reason, the analysis of the "real-mental" circumstances or structures behind 31 Samtfiche Werke, vol. 21, p. 114. 32 Cf G. BERG: Leopold von Ranke als akademischer Lehrer, Gottingen (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht) 1968, p. 193. 33 F. MEINECKE: Die Idee der Staatsriison (Werke, vol. I), 3rd. ed., Munich (Oldenbourg) 1963, p. 450. 34 Uber die Epochen der neueren Geschichte, p. 66.
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the description of the historical event must step back. Indeed, Ranke by no means underestimated the power of long processes. He referred again and again to the· "characteristic of things," the "great course of events," the "necessity of things," but did not investigate them. He considered it both unnecessary and impossible to trace political events back to them. His depictions give cross-sections of pictures, not structural analyses. The critique has taken this decisive element of Rankean historiography as its starting point. It has, in so far as it has itself started from idealistic presuppositions, accused Ranke of deficient analysis of intellectual relationships of influence. Count Paul Yorck von Wartenburg, for instance, called Ranke "a great eye-piece," for whom the stuff of history melts into "a fluctuation of forces increasing in shape."35 Also Dilthey, who reproached Ranke for standing still "in front of analysis and conceptual thought about the connections that are effective in history,,,36 took aim at the missing analysis of intellectual relationships of influence. 37 This critique experiences a modification when it is conducted from the social-historical perspective. Social-scientifically oriented history complains that the ocular way of contemplating retreats in the face of the analysis of economic-social structures. While the generalizing nlethod of the philosophical contemplation of history and the quantifying method of the social sciences all too easily abstract from that which emphasizes the character of the historical event as a superficial happening, the understanding method of the ocular contemplation of history cuts historical reality short in the aspect of the connections of influence, or structures. The science of history, which contents itself for methodological reasons, for the sake of objectivity, with reproducing the life that has disappeared, runs into danger in an additional respect, the danger of excluding significant elements of historical reality from its field of vision. By restricting itself to the descriptive representation of singular phenomena, it directs the interest of history towards those historical forces that have gained the advantage in confrontation with others and have stood their ground against them. The dominant tendencies of an epoch become the object of historical description; the forces countering them recede into the background. Because it does not per35
Briefwechsel zwischen W Dilthey und dem Grafen P. Yorck von Wartenburg, 1877-1897, Halle (Niemeyer) 1923, pp. 51 ff. 36 DILTHEY: op. cit., p. 101. 37 Cf. H. FREYER: Weltgeschichte Europas, Stuttgart (Deutscher Verlagsanstalt), 2nd ed., 1954, pp. 80 ff.
50
LEOPOLD VON RANKE mit the methodological strictness of enlpirical-realistic historical research, history must renounce the task of critically distinguish from the wealth of possibilities of an historical situation those that have been realized, of questioning the price of the actual development, and of discussing the alternatives to it. On the contrary, descriptive historiography assumes that the dominant forces are the only one with historical deep-rootedness. Only they have a clainl to legitimacy. This conservative characteristic of the understanding science of history, which does not emerge from its theoretical-methodological assumptions without internal logic, is also conspicuous with Ranke. Nietzsche already attacked his "clever indulgence of strength" and called him, as always bitingly and mockingly, an "advocatus of every causa !ortior."38 Even the student of Ranke, Jacob Burckhard, opposed the general weakness of the historian: the justification of historical forces, because they exist, and accordingly the justification of historical events, because they happened: "Thus he directly opposed Ranke's view of history, which was based on given facts and justified individual realities by spiritualizing them.,,39
III. In the Name of History: Historical and Political Conservatism Ranke's historical writing, with a basic disposition that was demonstrably conservative even in theoretical and methodological respects, developed during a time in which awareness of continuity was interrupted and traditional intellectual-political total existence was called into question. In the French Revolution, which was prepared intellectually by the Enlightenment, the attempt was made for the first time to establish an order of reason according to rationally conceived principles in the place of the organic, traditional order. Through the end of the Revolution in France and the defeat of the Napoleonic domination of Europe, political romanticism's conviction that it could not succeed in arranging the world "unhistorically" and according to reason as-
38 F. NIETZSCHE: Werke, ed. K. Schlechta, Munich (Hanser) 1955, vol. II, p. 879. 39 E. SCHULfN: Die weltgeschichtliche Erfassung des Orients bei Hegel und Ranke, Gottingen (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht) 1958, p. 291.
51
HELMUT BERDING serted itself against political rationalism, especially in Germany. History and historical knowledge were called upon and appealed to by the defenders of the old as an intellectual-political power against the idea of the liberal state and constitution. 40 Even Ranke gave his historical studies, which "actually developed in opposition to the dictatorship of Napoleonic Ideas,,,41 a particular political orientation in the sense of political romanticism. From the beginning, the religiously based change of direction towards history was accompanied by political intentions. After the Neoplatonic-idealist theology of history, political romanticism must be seen as the second great epoch-conditioned factor of Rankean historical thought. Ranke summoned history as an intellectualpolitical power against the threat to the closed, Lutheran, authoritarian-state life-world of his origin from the French Revolution and its consequences. Everything that threatened to break up the patriarchal-hierarchical structure of society of the pre-revolutionary period was rejected in the name of history. The fact that history could be called in against the revolutionary changes following the French Revolution is related to two assumptions that Ranke shared with political romanticism. First, the revolutionary upheavals were not traced back to the profound economic and social change that the emergence of bourgeois society hastened as an historical process, but were instead interpreted as consequences of intellectual potencies: as the work of Enlightenment thought. Second, the Enlightenment was not regarded as a current of thought that grew out of the entire historical process, but was instead left out of the tradition-context and understood as an ahistorical power. Ranke did not grant the "mania of improving the people and of the will to destroy everything existing,"42 which had spread to Germany with Napoleon's rule, the same historical legitimacy as the counterrevolutionary theories of the organic developedness of the historical world. Because the Enlightenment called the traditional order into question and judged it according to its idea of a liberal, bourgeois society, it appeared to him as the "despotism of biased theory.,,43 If the revolutionary principle were to gain the upper hand, if monarchy were to fail to "eradicate the destructive tendencies that were washed in from the
40 Cf. SCHIEDER: op.cit., p. 108. 41 Samtfiche Werke, vol. 53/54, p. 47. 42 Ober die Epochen der neueren Geschichte, p. 433. 43 Samtfiche Werke, Vol. 53/54, p. 197.
52
LEOPOLD VON RANKE popular principles like a great flood,"44 then the entirety of European culture and Christianity would be threatened. Ranke compensated for the deep-rooted fear of revolution, which accompanied him - as well as the entire conservative and also liberal middle class of the nineteenth century - in his political opinions, with his religious faith in history and in the inertia of the old powers. Without ever doubting his conservative position, he also saw a positive factor in the "clash of the two principles, monarchy and sovereignty of the people, with which all other conflicts are connected." It contained "an enormous movement and at the same time a great life-element."45 Ranke granted the revolutionary principle of the sover. eignty of the people, and the related revolutionary principle of national sovereignty as ferment, a partial legitimacy, as long as these principles did not work towards the subversion of what exists, but instead allowed themselves to be "integrated" by the powers of the old order - as did the Prussian Reform Party. The overcoming of the revolutionary principle by the monarchical principle at the time of the restoration was on the whole successful, in Ranke's opinion, even ifit was also repeatedly threatened. Ranke never made a secret of the fact that he stood fundamentally on the side of the Prussian monarchy and the social order embodied by it. After his home city became part of Prussia in 1815, Ranke entered Prussian service as a secondary school teacher in Frankfurt on the Oder in 1818. And after the Prussian state had granted him an excellent social position as a university professor in Berlin in 1825, he felt that in principle agreement with the reigning political and social system of the Prussian monarchy was "necessary for happiness and life.,,46 This declaration of belief in the Prussian state meant the Prussia of Friedrich Wilhelm IV in his early years, which was just as remote from the old Prussianness as from the new Prussianness of liberalism and the later "realpolitik."47 He saw individual liberties and social justice as guaranteed in it by the state - by the social reform policy of the existing government on the basis of its insight into the necessity of social requirements. Soon after the Revolution of 1830, Ranke took over the editorship of the Historisch-Politische Zeitschrijt, which was founded by the then Prussian 44 Ober die Epochen der neueren Geschichte, p. 444. 45 Ibid., pp. 441 and 444. 46 L.v. RANKE, Das Briefwerk, ed. W. P. Fuchs, Hamburg (Hoffmann & Campe) 1949, p. 308. 47 VIERHAUS: op.cit., p. 19.
53
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HELMUT BERDING Foreign Minister Count Christian GUnther von Bernstorff, and which was an organ for the defense of the policies of the enlightened Prussian bureaucracy against the liberal critique of the Left and the reactionary opposition of the Berliner Politische Wochenblatt. Although Ranke endeavored "to articulate a third trend, referring to the existing order, between the two opposing trends,"48 his attacks were almost exclusively against liberalism. He reproached it for applying abstract principles to politics, as he reproached philosophy for applying abstract principles to history. In contrast to liberalism and universal theory, Ranke promoted the idea of individuality: every state has its own inner life and its own principle. It had to follow the direction prescribed by history - thus the path trod by official Prussian governmental policy. It alone embodied the historically legitimated "Prussian Protestant Principle," while the opposing forces, namely the liberal movement, were excluded from the tradition-web of Prussian history and were represented as the embodiment of abstract (Le. unhistorical) principles. From this conception of individual, historical growth, it followed that liberal institutions that developed elsewhere were useless for Prussia. In France, the unfortunate consequence of grafting on foreign (Le. English and North American) ideas to traditional institutions has revealed itself. Everything good in Gennany since the French Enlightenment originated, not in emulation of, but rather in opposition to, French ideas. 49 Ranke's basic political views, which had become concretized during his activity as a political commentator in the Historisch-Politische Zeitschri/t from 1832 to 1836, remained unchanged in principle. After the resignation of Friedrich Wilhelm IV in 1857, Ranke withdrew completely to his historical work and also distanced himself inwardly from Prussian politics, without ever opposing it openly. He lamented the insufficiently strong resistance of the monarchy to the demands of the liberals. Ranke saw the political and social ascent of the middle class as inevitable after 1848, but did not welcome it. Bismarck's alliance with the liberals appeared disastrous to him, since it would sweep aside "all rules that had previously prevented the thronging of a propertyless crowd."so Ranke developed an unreservedly positive relationship with Bismarck's nation state, whose emergence he had observed from a cool distance, only after he became convinced "that in Bismarck the power of 48 Samtfiche Werke, vol. 53/54, p. 50. 49 Samtfiche Werke, Vol. 49/50, p. 41. Cf. IGGERS: op.cit., pp. 99-100. 50 Cited from W. MOMMSEN: Stein Ranke - Bismarck, Munich, 1954, p. 113.
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LEOPOLD VON RANKE
preserving is greater than that of rebuilding and that the Chancellor would once again return to the old conditions of a traditional world."S] With the integration of the nliddle class into the order of the traditional state, and of the German nation state into the concert of the European powers, every break of continuity that had threatened history since the Enlightenment and the French Revolution was once again repaired for Ranke. The mutually inconsistent principles of the time of revolution - monarchy vs. sovereignty of the people and national sovereignty - were brought together. In their mutual intertwining, they could be seen as different developments of the same one and indivisible history, in which the working, divine spirit manifests itself. Ranke seemed once again to be in full agreement with his central historicaltheological idea, which grants to every trend in history its legitimacy, which allows rising above the contradiction of the time and bringing the whole of history to view "objectively." He commenced, when the nationalistic historical writing reached its high point, the realization of the universal-historical intentions of his early years and wrote his Universal History. Ranke did not identify his historical writing with absolutized particular interest, as did the liberal-national historians of the Borussian School. He did not understand it as the national-pedagogical mission of creating for the small-German nation state a consciousness of tradition anchored in Prussian history. He was prevented from political historical writing in the national sense or the glorification of the Prussian-German power state by the religious commitments, directed towards universality, of his thought. Although Ranke towered above the national-liberal historians on the basis of his universalhistorical perspective and his more cautious and more careful assessment of contenlporary political debates, he had at the same time less understanding of and nlore resolute disapproval of the progressive trends of his time than the national-liberals, because his political ideas remained trapped in the prerevolutionary European power systenl of the sixteenth-eighteenth centuries and the political-absolutist and social-patriarchal order corresponding to it. In all periods of his historiographical work, the historical-theological character of his historical thought was overlaid by the political-romantic character, and even suppressed in his theory of the present. For that reason, Ranke depicted the historical, explosive power of the rising bourgeois society only negatively. He saw in the technical-scientific, economic, social, political, and intellectual development of the nascent industrial age only the effectiveness of destructive 51
Ibid., p. 113.
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HELMUT BERDING tendencies. 52 In the failure to recognize its positive-progressive significance and in the underestimating of its historical-power are also found the limits of Ranke's historical writing. Ranke failed to appreciate the significance of economic and social forces in history. The critics of his historical writing have repeatedly made this point. Rudolf Vierhaus has responded to those who have expanded this critique as far as the verdict that the entirety of the economic and social spheres is lacking or appears only peripherally in Ranke. His research has corrected sonle biases of the traditional picture of Ranke, but is nevertheless unable to change it. Ranke's historical view was primarily directed towards the governmental-political order. Social factors were considered only at particular points, when they intervened visibly in political events and reshaped the political order. They were never the objects of social-historical analysis that would have subtly investigated the social classes and their constant influences on political conditions. The connection between political constitution and social structure remained in the dark. 53 Ranke's disregard of the economicsocial sphere was undoubtedly influenced by the kind of sources that he used. Whether it was Venetian relations, Reichstagsakten, or documents, the historian was always confronted in them by the political world, and thus by the "public life of the past," whose depiction Ranke saw as the task of history. 54 The choice of sources, however, is not the cause, but the effect of the orientation of Ranke's research interests on the political-governmental order. Because of the Neoplatonic-idealist and political-romantic presuppositions of his thought, Ranke tied his historical research to a method that prevented him from taking up the remarkable social-historical, constitutionalhistorical, legal-historical, and economic-historical specialized research that already existed in Germany at that time. 55 In order to overcome the narrowing in perspective of the specialized research and to clear the view of the totality of historical events, he equated historical recognition with understanding. The originally religious motive was penetrated by an aesthetic interest in the richness of historical phenomena, which had to bring the historical depiction to 52 Cf. J. ROSEN: ~~Technik und Geschichte in der Tradition der Geisteswissenschaften - Geistesgeschichtliche Anmerkungen zu einem theoretischen Problem", Historische Zeitschriji, 211 (1970), pp. 529-55. 53 VIERHAUS: op.cit., p. 222. 54 Ibid., p. 131. 55 Ibid., p. 129.
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LEOPOLD VON RANKE contenlplation in artistic after-shaping for the enrichment of the represented subject. Under the influence of this idea of the educated middle class, which was deprived of its religious meaning by Ranke's successors and transformed into the discriminating and exclusive, the writing of history in Germany reached a high point in respect and effect. The outstanding significance of Ranke for the German science of history and its elevation to the status of a primary force in education is indisputable. Even his critics do not deny this. It is precisely they who tend instead to raise Ranke's position excessively. That is especially true of many Anglo-Saxon and Marxist interpretations. They see, as from a more distant vantage point, the entire official German discipline of history as a unified block, built on the foundation of Ranke's historical thought. Just as the foundation appears from this perspective to be crumbling, so does the building erected on it: theoretically feeble, conservative and authoritarian in terms of history and politics, and without relationship to the economic and social bases of historical movement. Viewed somewhat more closely, the picture looks more complex. As justified as the critique is, Ranke himself deserves a more carefully weighed assessment. His scholarly ethos, his sense of the unique and incomparable aspect of an historical situation that cannot be completely squeezed into uniform and typical historical processes, and his universal-historical orientation to the totality of the historical sequence of events are indispensable elements of historical discovery. It should also not be overlooked that in addition to the Small-German school, the Ranke renaissance of Max Lenz and Erich Marcks that arose against it, and Friedrich Meinecke's history of ideas movement - currents that can be traced back to a great extent, at least methodologically, to Ranke the liberal historical writing around Georg Gottfried Gervinus, the economic school around Gustav Schmoller, and the cultural-historical school around Karl Lamprecht in the German discipline of history could hold their own, even if with less resonance. With this reservation, which is certainly significant, one nevertheless cannot deny, when reflecting critically on the history of the German academic discipline of history, that the historical method developed by Ranke, with its idealist-romantic assumptions, its political implications, and its consequences for the relationship of history to economics and social science, has had greater impact than any other influence. Only since the Second World War has the science of history in West Germany begun to distance itself from this tradition and to approach a theoretical-
57
HELMUT BERDING methodological pluralism that opens up new paths to the survey of alwayscomplex economic-social-political reality. Translated from the German by David W. Lutz
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Chapter 4
Droysen and Nietzsche: Two Different Answers to the Discovery of Historicity ANNETTE WITTKAU-HORGBY
I. II.
III.
Droysen's Concept and Epistemology of the Science of History Nietzsche's Critical Approach to History: On the Use and Abuse of History Strengths and Weaknesses of Droysen's and Nietzsche's Concepts
Since the end of the 18th century, there have been fundamental changes in the political, economic and social order of Western Europe. In Germany especially, many aspects of the political life, social structure, legal system and economic order changed as a result of the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars and the subsequent Restoration period.] Parallel to the practical experience of such changes and as its theoretical counterpart, European scholars in general and German scholars in particular began to pay more and more attention to the historical dimension of reality. In the 19th century, philosophers and historians, especially in Germany, tried to explain these changes and thus to help cope with the feeling of instability experienced in almost every sphere of life. In 1868, Jacob Burckhardt2 described the relationship between the experience of a crisis and the increasing interest in history3 in his famous book "On the Study of History,,4 as follows:
1 2 3 4
NIPPERDEY (1983, p. 11). HARDTWIG (1974) and HARDTWIG (1988). RAULET (1996, p. 29). BURCKHARDT (1868).
ANNETTE WITTKAU-HORGBY The eternal change of time never ceases to carry off with it the forms which shape the outer garment of life. The enormous changes since the 18th century contain something which compels us to look at and investigate former and present conditions [...] A troubled period such as these eighty-three years of the Age of Revolution must create its own counterweight, if it does not want to lose all consciousness. 5 At roughly the same time, Johann Gustav Droysen and Friedrich Nietzsche 6 were also contemplating the origins and consequences of the increasing interest in history. They were contemporaries, but belonged to two different generations, and they developed two fundamentally different concepts of how to deal with the discovery of historicity. In this paper I wish to present a rough summary of both concepts (part I and II) and then to compare them (part III). My thesis is that on the one hand both positions contain a certain amount of truth, but that on the other hand they are both deficient in some respects. It is the combination of the two positions in a complementary sense that provides an adequate answer to the discovery of historicity.
I. Droysen's Concept and Epistemology of the Science of History From the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century onwards, the investigation of the past became scientific. Scholars started to investigate the historical genesis and development of all kinds of cultural phenomena. Historical sources and other historical material relating to cultural phenomena such as economics, law, music and art were used for empirical research. The figure of 'historical development' (' historische Entwick5
6
BURCKHARDT (1868, p. 107); "Der bestandige Wandel der Zeiten rafft die Formen, welehe das auBere Gewand des Lebens bilden, unaufhorlieh mit sieh." "Die gewaltigen anderungen seit dem Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts (haben) etwas in sieh, was zur Betraehtung und Erforsehung des Fruheren und Seitherigen gebieteriseh zwingt ... Eine bewegte Periode wie diese dreiundaehtzig Jahre Revolutionszeitalter, wenn sie nieht aIle Besinnung verlieren solI, muB sieh ein solehes Gegengewieht sehaffen." BURCKHARDT (1929-1934, vol. 7, p. 11). OEXLE (1996, p. 75).
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DROYSEN AND NIETZSCHE lung ') became an important and widely used type of explanation. In the disciplines of law and economics, the important so-called 'Historical School' emerged in Germany at this time. But in spite of all these scientific approaches to the history of law, economics, music or art in the first half of the 19th century, no epistemology of the historical science had yet been developed. In the prefaces to several historical studies, such as those of Ranke, Niebuhr, Savigny and Roscher, there were numerous remarks on how to investigate cultural phenomena in a scientific manner, but a systematic epistemology of the historical science did not yet exist. In 1857, the historian Johann Gustav Droysen presented a first attempt at such an epistemology of the science of history. In his lecture called Historik, published in 1868,7 he attempted to analyse what it meant to deal with history in the manner of an empirical science. Droysen (1808-1886) had studied in Berlin under Hegel and August Boeckb. In 1831, he wrote his doctoral dissertation and two years later, in 1833, he submitted his habilitation thesis, thus becoming qualified in the field of classic philology. He received a professorial chair in Kiel in 1840, moving in 1851 to the university of Jena and finally to Berlin, where he was offered a professorial post in 1859. 8 He first delivered his lectures on history as an empirical science in Jena, repeating it frequently in Berlin, 17 times altogether. 9 None of his lectures was delivered as often as this one. But in no other lecture did he have fewer students. I 0 These lectures have been preserved in the shape of Droysen's manuscript as well as of hand-written notes taken by Droysen's students and, finally, in the shape of Droysen's own manuscript intended for printing. These different versions were edited in a critical edition in 1977. 11 And in spite of the fact that Droysen's reflections went almost unnoticed in his time, they formed "a pioneering achievement in science",12 which was acknowledged with great acclaim several years later. Droysen himselfwas well aware of the fact that he
LEYH (Preface to DROYSEN, 1977, p. XIV). Regarding Droysen's biography see the biography written by his son GUSTAV DROYSEN (1919) as well as OBERMANN (1977). 9 LEYH (Introduction to the Critical Edition ofDROYSEN'S Historik, 1977, p. IX). 10 LEYH (1977, p. IX). 11 LEYH (1977). 12 LEYH (1977, p. IX). 7 8
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ANNETTE WITTKAU-HORGBY was fighting on a completely new front. In the preface to this lecture he writes: Everyone has a rough idea of what history and historiography are, of how to study history. But currently our science itself has no more than this rough idea.... I undertake to present you a discipline which does not yet exist, nor does it yet have a name or precise place among the sciences. We first have to prove that it is possible to treat it scientifically.I3 The 'Historik' is intended to be the organon of our science, the epistemology for history, as it were ... It must enable us to do those things which are ... already being done instinctively, but now doing them conscious of means and purpose. It nlust contain the scientific justification of our studies and it has to give answers to those questions which until now were solved in a practical manner, but which it has been left to who knows which disciplines to answer theoretically. 14 While Burckhardt had argued that it was the rapid change in the "outer gannent of life" that had caused the greater interest in history, Droysen chose a different starting point for his reasoning. He basically agreed with Burckhardt that the current changes were probably extraordinary in respect of their speed and, maybe, their fundamental nature. But changes and development, so Droysen argued, were not generally extraordinary. On the contrary, they were necessary and essential to human existence. The actual reason for the growth in historical interest was, therefore, not only to be found in the experience of a crisis, but, even more fundamental, was to be seen as rooted in the experience of the historicity of individual human existence.
13
DROYSEN (1977, p. 3). "Jeder hat eine ungefahre Vorstellung davon, was Geschichte und Geschichtsschreibung, was Studium der Geschichte ist. Aber mehr als diese ungefahre VorsteIIung hat bisher auch unsere Wissenschaft nicht ... Ich untemehme es, Ihnen eine Disziplin vorzutragen, die bisher noch nicht existiert, noch keinen Namen, keine Stelle in dem Kreise der Wissenschaften hat." 14 DROYSEN (1977, p. 44). "Die Historik soli das organon flir unsere Wissenschaft sein, gleichsam die Wissenschaftslehre der Geschichte ...; sie muG uns in den Stand setzten, das, was ... fort und fort instinktmaBig getan wird, im BewuBtsein der Mittel und Zwecke zu tun: Sie muB die wissenschaftliche Rechtfertigung unseres Studiums enthalten und auf die Fragen Antwort geben, die man bisher wohl praktisch loste, aber theoretisch wer weiB welchen anderen Wissenschaften zu beantworten iiberlieB."
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DROYSEN AND NIETZSCHE Not only man's culture had a history, it was man himself who was actually a historical being. The historian as a human being, so Droysen argued, was deeply connected with history. This connection, however, gave rise to a special relationship between subject and object in the epistemological process. The historian did not only face history as an object to be investigated scientifically, his own life and existence were deeply rooted in history itself. He "is in history and history is in him.,,15 There was an essential relationship between the subject and object of historical perception. From the moment of his birth, of his conception even, incalculable historical factors start to influence him (i.e. man). In a still unconscious state, he receives a wealth of influences from his parents, from their physical and mental disposition ... He is born into the whole historical circumstances of his people, language, religion, state and so on. And it is only by taking in and imbibing these factors which he found at birth, learning the infinite, without knowing it - it is only by doing this that he lives more than an animal, a human life. 16 It was this awareness of the historicity of one's own existence that according to Droysen fonned the actual reason for the interest in history. Here we have the point which lends our science its specific meaning. We see it dealing with a task which belongs essentially to human nature ... The historical world is essentially the human world ... The human world is of a thoroughly historical nature, and this is what specifically distinguishes it from the natural world. 17
15 DROYSEN (1977, p. 14). 16 DROYSEN (1977, p. 14). "Von dem Moment seiner Geburt, ja seiner Empfangnis an, wirken unberechenbare historische Faktoren auf ihn (d.L den Menschen) ein, bewuBtlos noch empfangt er die FiiIle von Einwirkungen seiner Eltern, ihrer leiblichen und geistigen Disposition ... Er wird hineingeboren in die ganze historische Gegebenheit seines Volkes, seiner Sprache, seiner Religion, seines Staates usw.; und erst dadurch, daB er das so Vorgefundene, Unendliches lernend, ohne es selbst zu wissen in sich nimmt und verinnerlicht, ... erst dadurch hat er ein mehr als tierisches, ein menschliches Leben." 17 DROYSEN (1977, p. 14). "Hier haben wir den Punkt, der unserer Wissenschaft ihre eigentiimliche Bedeutung gibt. Wir sehen sie mit einer Aufgabe beschaftigt, die spezifisch der menschlichen Natur ... angehort; die geschichtliche Welt ist die wesentlich menschliche ... Die Menschenwelt ist durch und durch geschichtlicher Natur, und das ist ihr spezifischer Unterschied von der natiirlichen Welt."
63
ANNETTE WITTKAU-HORGBY Human nature is essentially an historical one, and thus the consciousness of the historicity of the historian's own existence and the interest in history form a unity. Furthermore, the discovery of the historicity of one's own existence forms, according to Droysen, the presupposition for historical understanding. Historical investigation presupposes the insight into the fact that the contents of our personality are also a multiply transposed, an historical result. I8 This essential connection between the subject and the object of perception constitutes the specific character of historical perception. Historical perception is fundamentally different from those forms of scientific research we know from the natural sciences. The historian cannot analyse the past simply as an object. As he is dealing with materials and thoughts which have been created by human beings, he basically has the task of understanding the meaning of those relicts of the past which he is investigating.] 9 The essence of the historical method is to understand by way of research. 20 Droysen had already drawn attention to this specific dimension of historical perception. 21 Understanding is in his view the core of historical research. When Wilhelm Dilthey later took up this point, he elaborated in detail the importance of understanding the object for the 'Geisteswissenschaflen', as they were then called. Understanding the past is already an important point in Droysen's concept, but it is nevertheless only one of a number of aspects. In contrast to Dilthey, who placed great emphasis on the fundamental difference between the natural sciences (Naturwissenschaflen) and the humanities (Geisteswissenschaften), Droysen stresses the fact that the general scientific approach to the sciences and to history is the same. 22 For in spite of the fact 18 DROYSEN (1977, p. 399). "Das historische Forschen setzt die Einsicht voraus, daR auch der Inhalt unseres Ich ein vielfach vermitteIter, ein geschichtliches Resultat ist." 19 LEYH (1977, p. XI). 20 DROYSEN (1977, p. 398). "Das Weseo der historischen Methode ist forschend zu verstehen." 21 Droysen talked about this problem explicitly in a separate chapter of his 'Historik'. See DROYSEN (1977, p. 22). r2 OEXLE (1996, p. 42).
64
DROYSEN AND NIETZSCHE that the subject and object of historical perception are inseparably connected, historical perception itself is not arbitrary. According to Droysen, history is nevertheless an empirical science. 23 It is an empirical science because it bases and relates all hypotheses about the past to visible and thus empirical material which is still to be found in the present. This empirical way of treating questions is something that the natural and historical sciences have in common. The first step towards a correct historical perception is the insight that historical perception deals with the presence of material. This can be authors, acts, documents, monuments, laws ... material of all kinds, and we know that the origins of this material reach back into the past ... but we still find them in the present. And it is only because they are still present that we can ... use them as material for scientific historical investigation. 24 Again and again, Droysen stresses the point that the basis of scientific historical research is the existence of historical material in the present times. If no sources or other material were to exist as witnesses of the past, scientific historical perception would not be possible. The past itself is gone. What is left is historical material which has survived up to the present. Historical research is aware of the fact that it is deal ing with material which is part of the present. This material forms the point from which the historian goes back into the past; or, to be more precise, historical research takes up this point in the present and traces it back into the past by analysing and interpreting the material which has its origins in the past. Thus, historical research draws an imaginary picture of the past which would remain dead if historical research did not take up this point in the present. 25 In this scientific process of an imaginary reconstruction of the past, the hypothesis is of central importance. In analogy to the natural scientist, the historian develops a hypothesis regarding the past and analyses his material, starting with a concrete question. Research is concretely looking for something. It is not merely a question of finding by chance. One has to know what one is looking for,
23 24 25
(1977, p. XII). (1977, p. 9). DROYSEN (1977, p. 9).
LEYH
DROYSEN
65
ANNETTE WITTKAU-HORGBY otherwise one cannot find anything. One has to ask things in the right way, then they will answer. 26 As regards his epistemological concept of history as an empirical science Droysen basically argues in the Kantian tradition. However, he integrates this concept within a Hegelian27 view of the philosophy of history.28 He is in no doubt that it is moral ideas which actually constitute the driving force of history.29 Thus, as Droysen sees it, the meaning and sense of history are generally intelligible. They do not present major problems. Since Droysen follows Hegel in relation to the philosophical interpretation of history, the science of history does not basically present problems either.
Fig. 1: Droysen's conception of the relationship of history and life
26 DROYSEN (1977, p. 58). "Die Forschung sucht etwas, sie ist nicht auf ein bloB zufalliges Finden gestellt; man muB zuerst wissen, was man suchen will, erst dann kann man finden; man muB die Dinge richtig fragen, dann antworten sie." 27 HARDTWIG (1991, p. 5). 28 DROYSEN (1977, p. 194). 29 DROYSEN (1977, p. 424).
66
DROYSEN AND NIETZSCHE Droysen's epistemological concept of history as an empirical science was itself extremely modern, although it was embedded in the frame of Hegel's philosophy of history, which by that time was already out offashion. 30 Droysen's epistemology provided the basis for a discussion about the use and abuse of history which started at the beginning of the 1870s and which was to occupy the historical sciences for more than three decades. 31
II. Nietzsche's Critical Approach to History: On the Use and Abuse of History Droysen regarded the scientific approach to history as a great achievement. According to him the historical sciences helped to solve problems essential to human existence. Nietzsche did not agree at all in this respect. On the contrary, he regarded the same phenomenon of historicising thought as extremely dangerous. In 1874, only six years after Droysen's publication of the Historik, Nietzsche published the second of his Unzeitgemiij3e Betrachtungen under the title of Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie fur das Leben, 'On the Use and Abuse of History'. Here, he pointed out the negative effects of the scientific approach to history on the practical conduct of life in contemporary society as well as for the lives of the historians. Nietzsche (1844-1900) had studied theology and classical philology in Bonn and Leipzig from 1864 to 1868. In 1869, at the age of 25 years, he became Professor of Classical Philology at the university of Basle. There he met Jacob Burckhardt who was Professor of History at the same university. In the winter 1870/1871 or 1871/1872, Nietzsche attended Burckhardt's lecture "On the Study of History",32 which later became popular under the title Weltgeschichtliche Betrachtungen. As an admirer of Burckhardt,33 he was undoubtedly inspired by him to his own thoughts on this problem, and a few years later, in 1874, he published his reflections in the treatise On the Use and Abuse ofHistory.
30 31 32 33
(1994, p. 33). (1994, p. 61). GANZ (1982, p. 54) Introduction to BURCKHARDT. GANZ (1982, p. 56). WITTKAU WITTKAU
67
ANNETTE WITTKAU-HORGBY Nietzsche distinguished clearly between history as an empirical science and the philosophy of history. He showed that there was no relationship between the two which was systematically necessary. Therefore, he looked at both forms of historical understanding separately. On the one hand, he was critical of the philosophy of history, especially of Hegel's concept. Nietzsche was not convinced by Hegel's philosophy of history at all. 34 He regarded it as both speculative and arbitrary. Nietzsche criticised Hegel's claim that his concept of a philosophy of history was necessary as utter nonsense. 35 His main argument against Hegel's concept was that this philosophy did great damage to practical life because it implied that the climax of history had already been fulfilled by Hegel's own philosophy. The generations after Hegel thus had no choice but to regard themselves as mere epigones. According to Nietzsche this attitude caused an anxiety and uncertainty which prevented people from actively shaping their own historical period. For Hegel the climax and final goal of the world process coincided with his own existence in Berlin ... In fact, he should have said that all things to come after hinl would essentially be nothing more than a musical coda to the world history's rondo, indeed that they were to be regarded as superfluous. He did not say this, instead he has instilled in the ... generations after him, made sour by his philosophy, an admiration for the 'power of history' which in effect turns ... into an unconcealed admiration of success and to the worship of reality, of the way things are. 36 Nietzsche's intention was to completely liberate historical thinking from such philosophical misinterpretation. He detached history as an empirical science from this philosophical framework. Nevertheless, Nietzsche was not
34 35 36
p. 304). (1874, p. 304). NIETZSCHE (1874, p. 304). "FurHegel (fielen) der Hohepunkt und der Endpunkt des Weltprozesses in seiner eigenen Berliner Existenz zusammen ... J~ er hatte sagen mussen, dass aile nach ihm kommenden Dinge eigentl ich nur als musikalische Coda des weltgeschichtlichen Rondos, noch eigentlicher als uberflussig zu schatzen seien. Das hat er nicht gesagt: dafiir hat er in die von ihm durchsauerten Generationen jene Bewunderung vor der 'Macht der Geschichte' gepflanzt, die praktisch ... in nackte Bewunderung des Erfolges umschlagt und zum Gotzendienst des Thatsachlichen fiihrt." NIETZSCHE (1874, NIETZSCHE
68
DROYSEN AND NIETZSCHE satisfied with the scientific form of historical perception either, showing that the present form of history as an empirical science was dangerous, too. While Hegel's philosophy of history had the conservative effect of making people admire success and worship reality, Nietzsche's main point of criticism as regards the scientific fonn of historical perception was that it made people inactive and uneasy. According to Nietzsche, the scientific form of historical perception overwhelm,ed people with historical facts and material on the one hand,37 with the practical result that it hindered people from actively shaping their lives in the present. On the other hand, and this was even worse, history as an empirical science had the effect of making values appear relative, thus causing uncertainty in every kind of activity in practical life. Nietzsche showed that when compared with older forms of history, the modem scientific form of historical perception had started to develop a life of its own. People were no longer asking about the relevance of historical reflection for their present lives, the historians as well as the society in general had simply started to take for granted the fact that historical research was valuable and important. Let us take a quick look at our own times! We are amazed ... Where has all the clarity, all naturalness and purity in that relationship between life and history gone? ... Has there been a shift in the constellation of life and history? ...Yes, an enormous star has moved between them. The constellation really has been changed - by science, by the demand that history should be a science. Now it is no longer life itself that rules alone and bridles our knowledge of the past; all· boundary posts have been torn up, and everything which once was is now rushing in upon man ... Never has a previous generation seen such an enormous spectacle as that which history, the science of universal development and change, now unfolds. 38 37 Droysen had already noticed this effect, but had not regarded it as dangerous. See DROYSEN (1977, p. 71). "In der Natur der Sache liegt es, daB ... (die) Flille (der historischen Oberreste) unabsehbar ist, da ja alles und jedes, was durch Menschenhand und Menschengeist hindurchgegangen und deren Geprage tragt, gelegentlich als unmittelbare QueUe benutzt werden kann." 38 NIETZSCHE (1874, p. 268). "Schnell einen Blick auf unsere Zeit! Wir erschrecken ... wohin ist aIle Klarheit, aIle Naturlichkeit und Reinheit jener Beziehung von Leben und Historie ... Hat sich wirklich die Constellation von Leben und Historie verandert? ... Es ist allerdings ein ... Gestirn dazwischen getreten, die Constellation ist wirklich verandert - durch die Wissenschaft, durch die
69
ANNETTE WITTKAU-HORGBY Nietzsche pointed out that there were two main differences between history as an empirical science and the older forms of historical understanding. The first was, as shown by Droysen, the fact that the scientific approach to history was based on empirical data. Secondly, it was the fact that the scientific process of historical research was es~entially endless. This endlessness of scientific historical perception had the consequence that there were no longer clear criteria for the validity and relevance of historical insight. All facts appeared to be equally important. And it was precisely this aspect of science which according to Nietzsche caused great damage to life. Just picture to yourself the mental process which is induced in modern man's soul (through history as an empirical science). Historical knowledge is gushing from ever-flowing sources ... Strange facts without a context fight for our attention, memory has opened all its floodgates ... Finally, modern man is dragging around an enormous number of stones of indigestible knowledge. 39 But this knowledge remains unconnected to the present practical life. There are no longer valid criteria which could help the historian to distinguish relevant from irrelevant historical information. Let us suppose somebody is investigating the works of Democritus. In this case I ask: why did you not choose Heraclitus or Philo or Bacon or Descartes and so on. And why did you take a philosopher? Why didn't you choose a poet ... ? And why for heavens sake did you take a Greek, why not an Englishman or a Turk? ... But it does not really matter what people are investigating, as long as history is preserved in an objective manner. Yet, it is investigated by people who themselves are absolutely incapable of making history.40
Forderung, dass die Historie Wissenschaft sein soil. Jetzt regirt nicht mehr allein das Leben und bandigt das Wissen urn die Vergangenheit: sondem alle Grenzpfahle sind umgerissen und alles, was einmal war, stUrzt auf den Mensehen zu ... Ein soIch uniiberschaubares Schauspiel sah noeh kein Geschlecht, wie es jetzt die Wissenschaft des universalen Werdens, die Historie zeigt." 39 NIETZSCHE (1874, p. 268). 40 NIETZSCHE (1874, p. 279).
11)_
1--_------------
DROYSEN AND NIETZSCHE
Fig. 2: Nietzsche's conception of the relationship between history and life Nietzsche was the first one who drew attention to the fact that the scientific attitude towards history might have a dangerous effect on practical life. He showed that scientific historical research not only led to a fixation on the past, but that it also had the effect of generally relativising all cultural phenomena. Historical research made it clear that cultural institutions were normally in a process of development. As soon as cultural institutions came into being, they also began to change continuously; different institutional forms replaced one another in the course of historical development. But this fascinating observation, empirically demonstrated by the historians, had the consequence that it changed the attitude of people towards their own culture, too. Like cities which are struck by an earthquake and collapse and lay waste ... so is life itself beginning to collapse and become weak and disheartened when the abstract earthquake embodied by science deprives man of the basis of his security and peace of mind, the belief in continuation and in the eternal. 41 The discovery that the development of cultural institutions was dependent on how they developed and that they only existed for a relatively short time, 41
NIETZSCHE
(1874, p. 326).
71
ANNETTE WITTKAU-HORGBY made it clear that social acceptance of values was relative. This, however, considerably weakened the respect for the current forms of cultural institutions. As historians convincingly showed that cultural phenomena in general were only of relative value and durability, the contemporary cultural institutions fell under the same suspicion of having a relative value and of being of a temporary nature. Thus, the idea that absolute demands could be made on cultural phenomena was questioned. Summing up, Nietzsche showed that the process of historicising thought inevitably led to the collapse of morals and religion. 42
III. Strengths and Weaknesses of Droysen's and Nietzsche's Concepts Droysen and Nietzsche drew attention to completely different dimensions of the discovery of historicity. While Droysen pointed out the strengths of history as an empirical science, Nietzsche concentrated on the dangers accompanying this scientific understanding of history. The strength of Droysen's concept lay in its epistemological aspect, but a major deficiency of his concept was that he did not take into consideration the possible negative effects of historical perception on daily life. The integration of his concept in Hegel's philosophy of history prevented him from realising the fact that the discovery of historicity was an achievement that might equally cause problems. Nietzsche, however, chose the opposite approach. His strength lay in his criticism of the practical effects of historical perception on daily life. He pointed out clearly the dangers which accompanied history as an empirical science. But the main weakness of his concept was that he did not see any advantages in a scientific approach to history at all. In his view history could be of 'use' to life only by ceasing to be an empirical science. The three approaches to history that Nietzsche recommended as a remedy against the 'abuse' of history (the so-called 'monumental', 'antiquarian' and 'critical' history)43 had in common that all of them were non-scientific forms of historical perception. Thus, Nietzsche did not really present a solution as to how 42 See also BURCKHARDT (1868, p. 229). 43 NIETZSCHE (1874, aphorisms 2 and 3).
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DROYSEN AND NIETZSCHE to overcome the negative effects of the modem form of history as an empirical science. On the contrary, in spite of the fact that he had performed an excellent analysis of the practical effects of the discovery of historicity, he finally recommended a pre-modem approach to history. Nietzsche's critique regarding the use and abuse of history was extended shortly afterwards to the field of political economy by Carl Menger and to that of civil law by Rudolf Stammler. Both claimed that the phenomenon of the historisation of thought had led to a general relativisation of values, causing great damage to the political economy as well as to civillaw. 44 From then onwards this accusation was to be heard again and again in the German "Geisteswissenschaften" up until the time of Max Weber. 45 Weber, however, proceeded to show that this charge rested on a false understanding of what science was capable of. He argued that historical knowledge and nonnative questions were of a completely different nature, epistemologically speaking, and that historical knowledge could therefore neither damage the sphere of values and daily life nor provide ethical concepts. 46 Weber's clear distinction between science and values made Nietzsche's charge that the historisation of thought led to relativism appear unfounded. Weber made clear that both positions, Droysen's concept and Nietzsche's, contained a certain amount of truth. Droysen was right in claiming that scientific knowledge had to be empirically-based. 47 Nietzsche, on the other hand, was right in arguing that a possible fault of history might lie in it preventing people from developing action programmes focussed on the present. Weber pointed out that empirical science did not deal with the question of 'What should we do?' ,48 at the same time showing that Nietzsche's demand for an answer to this question, albeit a non-scientific one, was of vital importance 44 See A. WITTKAU: (1994, p. 61). 45 See A. WITTKAU: (1994). 46 See M. WEBER: "Wissenschaft als Beruf' (1919), in: M. WEBER: Gesammelte Aufsiitze zur Wissenschaftslehre, 6th edition Tlibingen (J.C.B. Mohr/Paul Siebeck) 1985, pp. 582-613. 47 See especially M. WEBER: "Roscher und Knies und die logischen Probleme der historischen Nationalokonomie", in: M. WEBER: Gesammelte Aufsiitze zur Wissenschaftslehre, 6th edition Tiibingen (J.C.B. Mohr/Paul Siebeck) 1985, pp. 1-145. 48 See M. WEBER: "Wissenschaft als Berui" (1919), in: M. WEBER: Gesammelte Aufsiitze zur WissenschaftsIehre, 6th edition Tlibingen (J.C.B. Mohr/Paul Siebeck) 1985, pp. 582-613, p. 609.
73
ANNETTE WITTKAU-HORGBY for daily life. By clearly distinguishing between historical and normative knowledge, Weber was able to demonstrate that each type of knowledge had its own sphere of competence,49 thus doing justice to both of them.
Life
History Philosophy Religion Science Art
Fig. 3: Weber's conception of the relationship between history and life In the light of Weber's epistemological approach, the conflict between Droysen and Nietzsche takes on a more pronounced profile. The problem that both concepts over-emphasised one particular aspect of the discovery of historicity can be overcome if we try to see them as complementing one another. Seen thus, Droysen's contribution was that he underlined the strengths and the practical use of history as an empirical science for understanding both human existence and culture. Nietzsche's contribution, on the other hand, was in identifying the potential dangers that might accompany historical investigations. The dangers Nietzsche alludes to do not appear quite so inevitable if we take into consideration Weber's arguments. It is not history itself as an em49 See M. WEBER: "Die 'Objektivitat' sozialwissenschaftlicher und sozialpolitischer Erkenntnis", in: M. WEBER: Gesammelte Aujsiitze zur Wissenschaftslehre, edited by J. Winckelmann, 6th edition Tiibingen (J. C. B. Mohr/Paul Siebeck) 1985, pp. 146-214.
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DROYSEN AND NIETZSCHE pirical science that gives rise to the process of relativising values, it is an exaggerated estimation of the importance of history. It is undoubtedly possible to avoid these dangers altogether, if the historian is aware of them. There is, however, as Weber has shown, no general remedy against such forms of the abuse of history. It remains the task of the individual historian to solve this problem.
References
BURCKHARDT, 1.: Ober das Studium der Geschichte (1868), der Tex.t der 'Weltgeschichtlichen Betrachtungen' nach den Handschriften herausgegeben von Peter Ganz, Munchen (C.H. Beck) 1982. BIALAS, W., RAULET, G.: Die Historismusdebatte in der Weimarer Republik, Frankfurt a.M. (Peter Lang) 1996. DROYSEN, G.: Johann Gustav Droysen, Leipzig (Duncker and Humblot) 1910. DROYSEN, JOHANN GUSTAV: Historik, Textausgabe von Peter Leyh, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt (Frommann-Holzboog) 1977. PETER GANZ (Ed.), JACOB BURCKHARDT: Ober das Studium der Geschichte (1868), Der Text der 'Weltgeschichtlichen Betrachtungen' nach den Handschriften herausgegeben, Munchen (C.H. Beck) 1982. HARDTWIG, W.: Geschichtsschreibung zwischen Alteuropa und moderner Welt. Jacob Burckhardt in seiner Zeit, Gottingen (Vandenhoek & Ruprecht) 1974. HARDTWIG, W.: "Jacob Burckhardt", in: N. HAMMERSTEIN (Ed.): Deutsche Geschichtswissenschaft um 1900, Stuttgart (Franz Steines Verlag Wiesbaden GMBH) 1988, pp. 97-112. HARDTWIG, W.: Die Verwissenschaftlichung der Geschichtsschreibung zwischen Aujkliirung und Historismus, Miinchen (C.H. Beck) 1990, pp. 58-91. IGGERS, G.: "Historismus im Meinungsstreit", in: O.G. OEXLE, 1. ROSEN (Eds.): Historismus in den Kulturwissenschaften. Geschichtskonzepte, historische Einschiitzungen, Grundlagenprobleme, Koln/Weimar/Wien (Bohlau) 1996, pp. 729.
LICHTBLAU, K.: Kulturkrise und Soziologie um die Jahrhundertwende. Zur Genealogie der Kultursoziologie in Deutschland, Frankfurt a.M. (Suhrkamp) 1996.
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ANNETTE WITTKAU-HORGBY NIETZSCHE, F.: Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, ed. by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, Dritte Abteilung, 1. Vol., UnzeitgemaBe Betrachtungen I-III (18721874), Berlin 1972. NIEHANS, J.: A History of Economic Theory. Classic Contributions, 1720-1980, Baltimore/London (Johns Hopkins University Press) 1990. NIPPERDEY, T.: Deutsche Geschichte 1800-1866. Burgerwelt und starker Staat, Miinchen (Verlag C.H. Beck) 1983. OBERMANN, W.: Der junge Johann Gustav Droysen. Ein Beitrag zur Entstehungsgeschichte des Historismus, (Dissertation), Bonn 1977. OEXLE, O. G.: Geschichtswissenschaft im Zeichen des Historismus. Studien zu Problemgeschichten der Moderne, Gottingen (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht) 1996. OEXLE, O. G., ROSEN, 1. (Eds.): Historismus in den Kulturwissenschaften. Geschichtskonzepte, historische Einschiitzungen, Grundlagenprobleme, Koln/Weimar/Wien (Bohlau) 1996. RAULET, G.: "Strategien des l-Iistorismus", in: W. BIALAS, G. RAULET (Eds.): Die Historismusdebatte in der Weimarer Republik, Frankfurt a.M. (Peter Lang), 1996, pp.7-38. SCHOLTZ, G.: Zwischen Wissenschaftsanspruch und Orientierungsbediirfnis. Zu Grundlage und Wandel der Geisteswissenschaften, Frankfurt a.M. (Suhrkamp) 1991. WEBER, M.: "Die 'Objektivitat' sozialwissenschaftlicher und sozialpolitischer Erkenntnis (1904)", in: MAX WEBER: Gesammelte Aufsiitze zur Wissenschaftslehre, edited by Winckelmann, Johannes, 6th edition TUbingen (J.C.B.Mohr/Paul Siebeck) 1985. WITTKAU, A.: Historismus. Zur Geschichte des Begriffs und des Problems, 2nd edition, Gottingen (Vandenhoeck &Ruprecht) 1994. WITTKAU-HoRGBY, A.: "Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie flir Nationalokonomie und Jurisprudenz. Uberlegungen zur Problemgeschichte des Historismus des spaten 19. und frohen 20. Jahrhunderts", in: W. BIALAS, G. RAULET (Eds.): Die Historismusdebatte in der Weimarer Republik, Frankfurt a.M. (Peter Lang), 1996, pp. 71-89.
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Chapter 5
Philosophy of History and Theory of Historiography in Jacob Burckhardt EOONFLAIO
I. II.
III.
IV.
European Culture is a Continuum The Threatened Continuum of the Occidental Culture 1. The Untameable Sovereignty of the People 2. Political Equality and Class Conflict: Burckhardt Between Tocqueville and Fustel de Coulanges Culture and War: Aestheticizing History 1. Enhancement of Existence: Heroism Versus Utilitarianisnl 2. Aestheticizing War Reshaping the Tasks of Cultural History
I. European Culture is a Continuum Occidental Culture for Jacob Burckhardt is a singular phenomenon in the History of the planet. Only this culture succeeded in building up a continuous tradition stretching from the Ancient Near East to the 19th century. All nonEuropean cultures remained within a special type of natural history: as they are not interested in one another, they appear and they disappear without being able to create a continuum joining them altogether. In Europe however; by means of a constant cultural effort of remembrance and tradition, the past is kept alive in a sort of historical metempsychosis: Das Kontinuum ist hochst groBaltig. Die Menschheit urns Mittelmeer und bis zum persischen Busen ist wirklich ein belebtes Wesen, die aktive Menschheit XUt' f;~OXll' v. Hier allein verwirklichen sich die
EGON FLAIG
Postulate des Geistes; hier allein waltet Entwicklung und kein absoluter Untergang, sondem nur Obergang. 1 This peculiar culture which is able to perpetuate itself took its origin in Greece. The Greeks developed a mental ability that made them susceptible to an interest in all things ("Allinteresse"). This intellectual disposition has guaranteed the survival of their own past in the sublimated form of a highly differentiated tradition and conscious appropriation of past achievements. This disposition is bound up with a curiosity which helps even foreign cultures to survive in the medium of remembrance, by including them into the great tradition initiated by the Greeks. The Greek culture originates in the Greek myth. 2 The Myth creates a specific notion of the world, which enables the Greek people to take an aesthetic point of view towards all things in the world. This aesthetically impregnated view is the prerequisite for a radically non-utilitarist attitude towards the world. So war das Griechenvolk geistig orientiert, welchem im Verlauf der Zeit die allergroBten weltgeschichtlichen Aufgaben zufallen sollten: in seiner mythischen Vorzeit gefangen, zu einer burchsUiblichen Geschichte nur ganz allmahlich befahigt, in poetischer Bildlichkeit vollig aufgehend - und doch im Verlauf der Zeiten dazu bestimmt, alle Volker zuerst zu verstehen und dies Verstandnis der Welt mitzuteilen, gewaltige Lander und Volker des Orients zu unterwerfen, seine Kultur zu einer Weltkultur zu machen, in welcher Asien und Rom zusammentrafen, durch den Hellenismus der groBe Sauerteig der alten Welt zu werden; zugleich aber durch dasWeiterleben dieser Kultur die Kontinuitat der Weltentwicklung fUr uns zu sichem; denn nur durch die Griechen hangen die Zeiten und das Interesse rur diese Zeiten aneinander; ohne sie hatten wir kein Wissen von der Vorzeit, und was wir ohne sie wissen konnten, wilrden wir zu wissen nicht begehren. Neben dieser endlosen Bereicherung des Gedankens bekommen wir dann noch als Beigabe die Reste ihres Schaffens und
2
"Historische Fragmente", in: JACOB BURCKHARDT: Gesamtausgabe, 14 vols., Basel/StuttgartiBerlin/Leipzig (Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt). 1929-1934, vol. VII, p.225. lORN ROSEN, JACOB BURCKHARDT, in: H.-U. WEHLER (Ed.): Deutsche Historiker, vol. III, Gottingen (Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht) 1972; E. FLAIG: Angeschaute Geschichte. Zu Jacob Burckhardts 'Griechische Kulturgeschichte', Rheinfelden (Schauble) 1987, pp. 187-250.
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PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY AND THEORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY Konnens: Kunst und Poesie. Wir sehen mit ihren Augen und sprechen mit ihren Ausdriicken. 3 Greek art and poetry are only external. The main legacy of Hellenic culture is not the material remnants but the mental disposition, a non-utilitarian curiosity and a non-utilitarian attitude towards life and the world. This is the basis for objective knowledge. Thus science and myth must not be diametrically opposed, instead they both are antagonistic against a mere utilitarian view of the world, a view that is eo ipso unable to be interested either in the past or in foreign cultures. 4 This attitude can best be preserved by art and by keeping ones eyes susceptible for the impressions art does give. VollsHindige und gleichmaBige Begabung fUr tiefe und zugleich vielseitige Aufnahme der Kunst ist eine seltene Gabe; was sich jeder davon am besten aneigne undwie, das ist jedes Einzelnen Sache. Die Hauptvorbedingungen sind: DaB man nicht blind der Welt der Absichten verfallen, sondem iiberhaupt einer objektiven Erkenntnis der Dinge offen, d.h. daB man kein gemeines Subjekt seL5 In a very Schopenhauerian phrase he asserts: Aesthetic susceptibility is an ethical quality; one must not subnlit one's own life totally to 'the world of intentions'. There is always a historical risk that this ability may perish, if there are too few people left who have not succumbed to a utilitarian attitude. Connecting that aesthetic attitude towards the world and the ongoing existence of occidental culture, Burckhardt is able to predict the exact time when the occidental culture will come to its end: Die Stunde, da unsere Kultur die groBen griechischen Gottertypen nicht mehr schon finden wird, wird der Anfang der Barbarei sein. 6 The aesthetic attitude is deemed to be the vital condition that the occidental culture may go on. It can disappear during a sharp historical crisis, if all
3 4
5 6
"Griechische Kulturgeschichte", I (Gesammelte Werke, Berlin 0.1. V), pp. 49f. E. FLAIG: "Asthetischer Blick und Griechischer Mythos. Wie Burckhardt fur Europa einen Ursprung erfindet", in: P. BETTHAUSEN, M. KUNZE (Eds.): Jacob Burckhardt und die Antike, Mainz 1998, pp. 27-37. "Die Kunst des Altertums", in: JACOB BURCKHARDT: Gesamtausgabe, vol. XIII, p.27. "Die Kunst des Altertums" (Gesamtausgabe, XIII), p. 23.
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EGON FLAIG activities of the European mankind are defeated by material interests. According to Burckhardt's historical diagnosis, this is going to happen in the deep crisis which the European society is undergoing during his own time and the immediate future. Anyway, he sticks firmly to his opinion that the occidental culture in spite of all social transformations may survive and be prolonged into the future. His implicit philosophy of history cuts out the margin for his theory of historiography and determines to a high degree the tasks of cultural history. But if in Burckhardt's diagnosis the actual crisis threatens the verj basis for the continuity of the occidental culture, we have to take a very close look at the peculiarity of this crisis.
II. The Threatened Continuum of the Occidental Culture' Burckhardt's conception of contemporary history revolves around three premises. He postulates, first, that no distinction exists between 'radical' and 'representative' democracy; any kind of 'restraint' that the principle of representation might impose on the will of the masses ultimately fails to be effective due to the basic sovereignty of the people in all types of democratic government; secondly, that political equality inevitably produces the desire for social equality, and that the fight for social equality that ensues throws society into class struggles; and thirdly, that class struggles dramatically lower the moral standard of society as a whole: they generate a historical constellation in which social life falls increasingly under the sway of base material motives that lack any cultural dimension whatsoever; at that point, the danger arises that outright civil wars will tear the very fabric of society into pieces. 1. The Untameable Sovereignty of the People The cardinal point of reference in the nineteenth-century political debates was of course the French Revolution. Liberals, democrats, Bonapartists, le7
I am grateful to Ingo Gildenhard and Martin Ruehl for translating the whole second chapter of my article together with all quotations from BURCKHARDT'S Griechische Kulturgeschichte.
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PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY AND THEORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY gitimists or reactionaries - when formulating their political theories, argued their case with reference to this event. The most hotly debated issue was the sovereignty of the people. The great counter-revolutionary thinkers - DeMaistre, Bonald, Donoso Cortes - shared the same fundamental objection to a foml of government based on this principle: It would, they thought, result in chaos and the dissolution of society. How so? Quite simply: the sovereignty of the people would bring about the equality of all citizens; political equality would undermine social hierarchies; this, in tum, would destroy the political authority· of social institutions and lead to anarchy; and anarchy would plunge society into chaos and civil war. This chain-reaction was bound to happen since a sovereign people was allegedly unable to maintain a stable order. After all, in a democracy, potentially everything is at all times up for discussion, transformation, and repeal - even the constitution itself: In part, this line of reasoning was a backlash against some of the most widely-read theoreticians of the sovereignty of the people - Rousseau and the Abbe Sieyes - who had developed such radical versions of this concept that one could indeed draw anarchistic conclusions from their ideas. In his famous pamphlet, Qu 'est-ce que Ie tiers etat?, Abbe Sieyes 8 argued that the "Pouvoir constituant" is not bound to any single will; it may dissolve or reshuffle the "pouvoir constitue," i.e. the government and the constitution, at any time in any way it considers fit. The nation, in other words, may re-create its societal conditions ever anew - when and as it pleases. At the time of the French revolution, the Abbe Mably endorsed the same point of view9 - precisely the line of thought against which the counter-revolutionary critics of democracy direct their harshest polemics. In the beginning of the nineteenth century a liberal movement gradually took shape that defined itself against the forces of radical democracy as well as counter-revolutionary Catholicism and conservatism. These Liberals were outspoken proponents of the sovereignty of the people, while at the same time rebutting the ancient model of direct democracy. The best-known advocate of this via media is Benjamin Constant, who, in 1819, delivered a speech on "two types of freedom" in the Athenaeum at Paris, in which he drew a sharp distinction between the individual freedom of modernity and the political 8 9
Qu 'est-ce que Ie tiers etat? (ed. by R. Zapperi), Geneva 1970. GABRIEL BONNET DE MABL Y: "De la legislation ou principes des lois", III 3 and 4, in: Collection complete des Oeuvres (par G. Arnoux), vol. 9 (Paris 1794/95); reprinted Aalen 1977, pp. 290-356.
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EGONFLAIG freedom of antiquity. 10 He acknowledged both the principle of sovereignty of the people (which he considered a good thing); yet at the same time he took the edge off its radical implications by claiming that the people should not govern directly, but via their elected representatives. Here we have, for the first time, a succinct political formula of modem representative democracy. Constant's writings were highly influential in the decades leading up to the 1848 revolutions. In many ways, Burckhardt levies a frontal attack on this notion of representative democracy. For him, the ultimate outcome of any democratic form of government, with or without an element of representation, is the tyranny of the nlasses. Representation in no way prevents those who are being represented from gaining the upper hand over the representing instance - due to the fact that the masses ruthlessly and unconditionally pursue their very own interests: Die guten liberalen und selbst rad'ikalen Erwerblinge konnen lange vor den Volksfiihrem auf die Knie fallen und sie anflehen, keine Dummheiten zu machen. Die VolksfUhrer mUssen eben, urn wiedergewahlt zu werden, die geschreilustigen Schichten der Volksmassen fUr sich haben, und diese verlangen, daB stets etwas geschehe, sonst glauben sie nicht, daB 'Fortschritt' vorhanden sei... Aus diesem cercle vicieux kommt man beim suffrage universe] iiberhaupt nicht mehr heraus. Eins nach dem Andern muB geopfert werden: Stellen, Habe, Religion, distinguierte Sitte, hohere Wissenschaft - so lange die Massen auf ihre meneurs drUcken konnen und solange nicht irgend eine Gewalt drein ruft: Haltet' s Maul! Wozu vor der Hand noch nicht die leiseste Aussicht vorhanden. Und... diese Gewalt kann beinahe nur aus den Bosesten hervorgehen und haarstraubend wirken. II
10 In: BENJAMIN CONSTANT: Cours de politique constitutionelle ou collection des ouvrages publies sur Ie gouvernement representatif, ed. by Edouard Laboulaye, 2 vols., Paris 1872, vol. II, pp. 539-60. Cf. STEPHEN HOLMES: Benjamin Constant and the Making 0/ Modern Liberalism, New Haven/London (Yale University Press) 1984, pp. 182-7. II Letter to Alioth, 10. September 1881 (Jacob Burckhardt Brie/e. Vollstiindige und kritisch bearbeitete Ausgabe. Mit Benutzung des handschriftlichen Nachlasses hergestellt von M. Burckhardt, 9 Bande, Basel 1949ff, vol. VII, pp. 288-9): "The good liberals and even those in a radical way of business, may fall on their knees before the leaders of the people and beseech them not to commit any follies. But
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PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY AND THEORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY Buckhardt apparently believes that delegates must of necessity yield to the interests of those whom they represent; otherwise, the masses will vote them out of office. In other words, Burckhardt asserts that a state of political equality eliminates the possibility of representation. Succinctly put, he regards representation as an illusion. This premise has drastic consequences for the status and significance of ancient democracy in modern times. The liberal supporters of Benjamin Constant were able to keep the direct democracy as practiced by the Athenian polis at a comfortable distance, together with its potentially radical lessons for contemporary politics. With representative democracy offering a viable alternative, the disturbing fact of mass-rule in ancient Athens could safely be filed away in the archives of history, bearing little relevance to current affairs. By disavowing the efficacy of representation in his own time, indeed rejecting the very principle, Burckhardt all but eliminates the distinction between the ancient type of democracy and alternative modem forms. As a result, Greek democracy is suddenly no longer a thing of the past. The events in fifth-century Athens have gained a burning urgency; rather than being a closed chapter of history, they are frighteningly real. With one strategic stroke, Burckhardt has thus staked out a distinct theoretical space for himself, in which the historiography of ancient Greece turns into a lesson for Europe's political future at the time he was writing. This works both ways: if no fundamental differences exist between ancient and modem democracies, Greek democracy may be analyzed with recourse to ideological schemes articulated in modem political thought; in tum, if these schemes prove their validity in the analysis of the past, they will have acquired greater plausibility when adduced in arguments about the present and future. It is not by accident that the above letter was written just when Burckhardt compiled the final version of the first two volumes of his Greek Cultural History. in order to be re-elected, the leaders of the people, the demagogues, must have the masses on their side, and they in turn demand that something should always be happening, otherwise they don't believe 'progress' is going on. One cannot possibly escape from that cercle vicieux as long as universal suffrage lasts. One thing after another will have to be sacrificed: positions, possessions, religion, civilized manners, pure scholarship - as long as the masses can put pressure on their Meneurs, and as long as some power doesn't shout: Shut up! - and there is not the slightest sign of that for the time being. And ... that power can really only emerge from the depth of evil, and the effect will be hair-raising." (translated by A. Dru).
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2. Political Equality and Class Conflict: Burckhardt Between Tocqueville and Fustel de Coulanges Unlike Constant, Burckhardt criticizes the direct democracy that was practiced in the Athenian polis not by comparing it to the modem version of representative democracy - as we have seen, this was not a viable alternative for him anyway. Rather, he put the stress on the inability of ancient Athens to reconcile a general civic equality with a distinctly political inequality between leaders and the masses: Eines scheint in Athen ganz unmoglich gewesen zu sein, namlich die Einfiihrung eines Systems, das Regierung durch Wenige mit Freiheit fUr aIle verband, einer die Gleichberechtigung der Regierten voraussetzenden Oligarchie... Denn der MiBbrauch der Gewalt ware zu unvermeidlich gewesen. Thukydides seIber sagt: es bediirfe des demokratischen Regiments, damit die Armen eine Zuflucht und die Reichen einen Ziigel hatten. Die Griechen haben nie biirgerliche Gleichheit mit politischer Ungleichheit zu verbinden gewuBt. Der Arme muBte zu seinem Schutz gegen Unbill Mitstimmen, Richter und Magistrat sein konnen... 12 This quotation is taken almost verbatim from Fustel de Coulanges' influential book La Cite Antique of 1864, where the relevant passage reads: On aurait peut-etre evite l' avenement de la democratie, si l' on avait pu fonder ce que Thucydide appelle oligarchia isonomos, c'est-a-dire Ie gouvernement pour quelques-uns et la liberte pour tous... Les Grecs n' ont jamais su concilier l' egalite civile avec l' inegalite politique. Pour que Ie pauvre ne rut pas lese dans ses interets personnels, i1 leur a paru
12 Griechische Kulturgeschichte I (Ges. Werke, V) p. 205. "One thing appeared to be entirely impossible in Athens, i.e. the introduction of a system that combined the rule by the few with freedom for all, an oligarchy that would take as its basic assumption the equality of those being ruled... For the abuse of power would have been unavoidable. Thucydides himself says that a democratic regime is necessary so that the poor may have a refuge and the rich a restraint. The Greeks were never able to combine civic equality with political inequality. The poor man had to be able to act as voter, judge and government official in order to protect himself against injustice... "
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PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY AND THEORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY necessaire qu'il eut un droit de suffrage, qu' il rut juge dans les tribunaux, et qu'il put etre magistrat. 13 The all but direct quotation is by no means exceptional. In fact, the entire conceptual architecture that Burckhardt employs to explicate the sociopolitical processes he deemed responsible for the disintegration of the Greek polis, he derived from Fustel's great book, changing hardly anything at all in his model. In his Greek Cultural History, Burckhardt explains the decline of the Greek polis with reference to an axiom formulated by Tocqueville, namely that political equality will inevitably lead to ongoing efforts to bring about social equality. Delivering a speech as a delegate in October of 1847, Tocqueville stated: La Revolution fran~aise, qui a aboli tous les privileges et detroit tous les droits exclusifs, en a pourtant laisse subsister un, celui de la propriete. .. Aujourd'hui que Ie droit de propriete n'apparait plus que comme Ie demier reste d'un monde aristocratiqe detroit. ..c'est a lui seul maintenant a soutenir chaque jour Ie choc direct et incessant des opinions democratiques... 14
FUSTEL DE COULANGES: La Cite Antique. Etude sur Ie culte, Ie droit, les institutions de fa Grece et de Rome, Paris 27 1922, p. 387. "Perhaps one could have avoided the tum towards democracy if one had been able to establish what Thucydides calls oligarchia isonomos, that is to say sovereignty for some and liberty for alL.. The Greeks were never able to reconcile civic equality with political inequality. In order to protect the poor nlan from being abused in his personal affairs, they deemed it necessary that he have the right to vote, that he be judge in the tribunals and that he have the possibility to act as magistrate." Burckhardt indicates in his text that he is following Fustel here (Griechische Kulturgeschichte, vol. I, p. 206). Nonetheless, he does not say to what extent he echoes Fustel's formulations. Right after the quotation given above, Fustel argues that it is precisely the enormous control of the polis over human life in its entirety that makes everyone want to participate in its power. Burckhardt makes this thought· his own. 14 OC (= ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE: Oeuvres, Papiers et Correspondance, Edition definitive publiee sous la direction de J. P. Mayer, Paris 1952ff.), vol. XII, pp. 36-7. "The French Revolution which abolished all privileges and destroyed all special rights, however, left one of them intact, the right of property... In our time, when the right of property only appears as the last remainder of a destroyed
13
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EGON FLAIG Tocqueville here sets up an antagonistic relation between political equality and economic inequality. This alleged antagonism has become crucial both for so-called liberal and for so-called conservative thinkers in their endeavours to playoff 'liberty' against 'equality' - a move that is only plausible if one radically depoliticizes the notion of 'liberty'. Burckhardt even goes a step further in suggesting that political equality will eventually result in the breakdown of social stability. Political equality, in his eyes, had two fateful consequences that kicked in almost immediately after it is set up: it created a new burning desire - the desire to tum political equality into economic equality; and it also created a new instrument to bring this about - political decision-making by majority vote. Burckhardt describes the origins of this fateful nexus thus: In der alten Zeit der Geschlechterherrschaft namlich hatte man die Misere kaum gekannt. Erst die Gleichheit der Rechte machte die Ungleichheit der Lage recht fiihlbar. Ein Ausgleich durch Arbeit aber (welche der Reiche bedurft und der Arme gegen Lohn geleistet hatte) war unmoglich wegen der allgemeinen Antibanausie. 15 He took this line of argument almost directly from Fustel who had taken it, in his tum, from Tocqueville and other commentators on the 1848 revolution in France. 16 We also find this thought in Tocqueville's notes for February 1848 (revised in 1850).17 Here we have the origins of Burckhardt's notion that equality of political rights renders long-standing socio-economic inequalities glaringly obvious. Tocqueville built his theory of the revolution around this very aristocratic world...it is its task alone now to bear every day the direct and unceasing brunt of democratic opinions." 15 Griechische Kulturgeschichte I, p. 243. "In the old times when aristocratic families ruled, the misery was hardly felt. Only the equality of rights made the inequality of position truly noticeable. A balancing through labor (which the rich needed and the poor would have provided for wage) was impossible due to the general antibanausia". 16 "La democratie ne supprima pas la misere; elle fa rendit, au contraire, plus sensible. L' egalite des droits politiques fit ressortir encore davantage r inegalite des conditions" (Cite antique, p. 397). "Democracy did not eradicate misery; on the contrary, it made it even more strongly felt. The equality of political rights brought the inequality of social conditions even more to the fore." 17 Cf. Tocqueville's notes for Feburary 1848 (revised in 1850), OC XII, pp. 96-7.
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PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY AND THEORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY axiom. In Burckhardt, it becomes the motor that keeps the internal struggles within the Greek city-states going until the final breakdown of their civic communities. He argues that the poor citizens, once empowered politically, will start to pursue material interests in their desire to abolish economic inequality as well. In Burckhardt's scenario, this is the moment in time when class struggles dramatically erupt in the political sphere. Being in the majority, the poor employ the popular vote to change the existing distribution of property: Jetzt wurde der Arme inne, daB er als Herr der Stimmen auch Herr des Besitzes werden konne... 18 - again a sentence that has its all but verbatim equivalent in Fustel de Coulanges' Cite antique. 19 For Burckhardt, this thought is absolutely pivotal, the factor around which the entire political process of Greek civilization ultimately revolves. It is also the core of his conception of social order in the modem age. Let us take a closer look at the reasons he gives for the outbreak of the struggle between rich and poor: In Griechenland aber begann, als die Gleichheit da war und man nicht rnehr urn Prinzipien und Rechte zu kampfen hatte, der Krieg zwischen Reich und Ann, in manchen Stadten schon sogleich mit Eintritt der Demokratie, anderswo nach einer langeren oder kiirzeren Zwischenzeit der M3,Bigung... 20 18 Griechische Kulturgeschichte I, p. 243. "Now the poor man realized that as lord of the votes, he could also become lord of property". 19 "Le pauvre avait I'egalite des droits. Mais assurement ses souffrances journalieres lui faisaient penser que l'egalite des fortunes eut ete bien preferable. Or it ne fut pas longtemps sans s'apercevoir que l'egalite qu'il avait pouvait lui servir a acquerir celle qu'il n'avait pas, et que, maitre des suffrages, il pouvait devenir maitre de la richesse" (Cite antique, p. 398). "The poor man had the equality of rights. But naturally his daily sufferings made him think that the equality of property would have been much preferable. Now, it did not take him long until he realized that the equality which he had could help him gain the one he did not have. As lord of the votes he could become lord of wealth." 20 Griechische Kulturgeschichte I, p. 242. ,,In Greece, the war between poor and rich began when equality had been achieved and one no longer had to fight over principles and rights; in some cities that happened as soon as democracy got established, elsewhere after a longer or short interval of restraint." Again, he took
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Burckhardt's explication of the change and decline of the Greek city-states can be summed up as follows: since the polis exercised quasi-total power over its citizens, it could enforce arbitrary expropriations. The masses could not resist the ten1ptation to abuse their majority in the assembly and thus to transform political equality into social equality. Naturally, the oligarchs defended themselves as much as they could. The class war resulting from this sociopolitical dynamic ruined the Hellenic polis. Von der spateren Zeit der demokratischen Polis, seit der Schlacht von Charonea, wendet sich der Blick bekanntlich geme ab, es ist aber alles Eine Kette von Ursachen und Wirkungen bis zur gegenseitigen Ausrottung, bis zur Verodung desjenigen Griechenlands wie es die Romer libemahmen, und dieser Krankheitsgeschichte wird sich die Darstellung, sobald sie objektiv verfahren solI, nie entziehen konnen... Das Hauptilbel war, daB sich die Demokratie mit der starken antibanausischen Gesinnung gekreuzt hatte, daB die Gleichheit der Rechte mit der Abneigung gegen die Arbeit Zllsammengetroffen war, worauf die Nichtstuer die Mittel des Stimmrechts und des Gerichtswesens auf permanente Bedrohung der Besitzenden wandten. Es ist wahnsinniger MiBbrauch der Majoritat in einer Sache, welche unvermeidlich auch diese wieder in eine Majoritat und Minoritat spalten muB... 21
21
this assessment straight from Fustel: "Lorsque la serie des revolutions eut amene r egalite entre les hommes et qu' il n' y eut plus lieu de se combattre pour des principes et des droits, les hommes se firent la guerre pour des inten~ts" (Cite antique,p. 397). "When the series of revolutions between men had led to equality between people, and when there was no longer an opportunity to fight with one another over principles and rights, men went to war with one another over interests". Griechische Kulturgeschichte I (GW, V) p. 254. "It is well known that the later periods of the democratic polis (since the battle at Chaironeia) are usually ignored; but we are dealing with One chain of causes and effects up to the point of mutual annihilation, up to the destruction of that Greece that the Romans took over. And a historical narrative once it strives to be objective can never ignore that chronicle of pathologies... The main evil consists of the merging of democracy with a strong anti-banausic ethos, of a meeting of equality of rights with a dislike of labor, which resulted in the idle turning the devices of the right to vote and the legislature into a permanent threat to the propertied. It is an insane abuse
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PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY AND THEORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY In other words, civil wars - conceived as wars between the poor and the rich - accelerate the self-destruction of the political sphere. This process is tantamount to an erosion of social cohesion, with a slow, yet comprehensive disintegration of society as such. Once the state itself has degenerated to the point of being a mere instrument for the enforcement of special interests, no instance is left to counterbalance the collision of diametrically opposed desires. Since these desires are material in nature, a compromise is out of the question, for the simple reason that material desires are insatiable. Die Wunsche aber sind wei! iiberwiegend materieller Art, so ideal sie sich auch gebarden, denn die Weitmeisten verstehen unter GlUck nichts anderes; materielle WUnsche aber sind in sich und absolut unstillbar, selbst wenn sie unaufborlich erfiillt wiirden, und dann erst recht. 22 In his Greek Cultural History, this thought recurs in the following guise: Die Gier der dotierten Masse hinwiederum war aus innem Grunden unerfiillbar und muBte stets zu neuen Anderungen drangen. 23 Burckhardt enlployed the concept of material interests in the same radical sense in which Oonoso had used it24 - as an analytical tool to associate systematically such concepts as 'the masses' and 'the sovereignty of the people' with political catastrophe. Burckhardt here openly peddles a sort of philosophy of history: naked material interests undermine the cultural determinants that should ideally shape our habitual dispositions. For Burckhardt such a development would prove nothing short of disastrous - unsurprisingly, given the causality he thought would be triggered once of majority in a matter that will inevitably again split this majority into a majority and a minority..." 22 "Historische Fragmente" (Gesamtausgabe, VII), p. 432 "The large majority of wishes are of a material nature, even if they are dressed in an idealistic garb, for most people take happiness to mean just that. Material wishes, however, are in and of then1selves absolutely unfulfillable, even if they are continuously satisfied - or rather: especially when they are continuously satisfied". 23 "Griechische Kulturgeschichte" I (GW, V) p. 200. "The greed of the masses, on the other hand, was inherently unfulfillable and constantly had to bring about new changes". 24 See JUAN DONOSO CORTES: Der Abfall vom Abendland, ed. by P. Viator, 1849, p. 95 (Letter to Cardinal Fornari, 19 June 1852).
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EGON FLAIG material interests gained the upper hand: once that is the case, human beings cease to follow their intellect and higher ideas; their readiness for selfsacrifice breaks down; and they are no longer concerned with promoting culture: the motives for doing so have been diminished. Once material drives triumph and social interaction within a culture is predominantly oriented towards mercenary profit, the potency "State" declines. Quickly, all struggles tum into struggles over the distribution of wealth. This process will not come to a halt by itself since all material desires are inherently unsatisfiable; in the end, they induce the nlasses to tear each other to pieces. This protracted state of war leads to the gradual destruction of the political as well as the social sphere. No institution is able to provide a counterweight to the opposing factions since the state itself has degenerated into a mere instrument for competing particular interests. Burckhardt constructs a relapse into a state of nature slightly reminiscent of Hobbes. Yet whereas in Hobbes everybody is at war with everybody else (bellum omnium contra omnes), Burckhardt projects a succession of conflicts between different social groups. The notion of "material interest" is not merely an analytic tool for Burckhardt; it is a concept that has political value when the stability of social and political order in general is at issue. As always, he is not merely concerned with the analysis of the fall of the Greek polis; in addition, he uses his historiographical narrative to take a stance in political controversies. As contemporary France shows, the lessons of history should better be heeded: Erbarmlich und hilf10s ist die Lage Uberall, wo von unten herauf und durch die Presse regiert wird, aber so elend wie in Frankreich geht es doch nirgends. Selbst Boulanger ist nur petulance und contrefa~on und gar alles ist reclame... Frankreich ... wird von Strebern bis aufs Mark aufgefressen. So kann' saber noch lange gehen! Die Griechenstaaten haben Uber zweihundert Jahre so geserbelt, bis die Bevolkerung sich allmahlich aufgerieben hatte und die Verodung eintrat, d.h. zwei Drittel der SUidte nur noch menschenleere TrUmmer waren. Wo Streber gewaltet haben, erhebt sich die Tyrannis nur noch momentan und lokal, und das Strebertum wird immer wieder Meister. Wenn nicht die Rom,er drUber gekommen waren, hatte auch der Rest der Nation sich aufgezehrt. Also Geduld! Und richte man sich aufs dauernde Elend ein. 25
25 JACOB BURCKHARDT: Briefe, vol. IX, p. 125-6. "In every place, where the government is run from below and by the press, the situation is miserable and help-
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PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY AND THEORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY Burckhardt's prediction about the future of the crisis in contemporary France does not fully converge with his historiographical staging of decline in ancient Greece. For he pinpoints one essential difference between modem times and Greek antiquity. The Greeks did not find a way out of democracy and thus succumbed to ruinous civil wars. Modem nation-states, however, maintain large standing armies. This is the reason why they will not succumb to the anarchy of civil war that is otherwise the characteristic outcome of a democratic form of government. Rather, their fate will be ruthless military dictatorships after a sequence of serious social upheavals. Here, too, the much-lauded prophet Burckhardt erred.
III. Culture and War: Aestheticizing History In Burckhardt's eyes, the trend towards democracy threatened to destroy Western civilization since it diminished the human capacity for the creation of "high culture." He thought that democratic forms of government would inevitably lower human motivations to a level so base that it could not sustain cultural production in the higher sense; the fall of society into a state of lawlessness would then always be an imminent possibility. This does not imply that Burckhardt considered any other form of political constitution as inherently conducive for cultural creativity; rather, he endorsed the view that the greatness of an age, Le. above all its cultural productivity, depends on the quota of individuals who are able and willing to make personal sacrifices. The "willingness to make sacrifices" thus advances to a state of cardinal importance in his implicit philosophy of history. What does this notion signify?
less, but nowhere are matters more desolate than in France. Even Boulanger is only petulance and contrefa~on and everything is reclame... France is devoured to the bones by careerists/ social climbers. But this can go on for years to come! The Greek states have warred until the population gradually wiped itself out and desolation ensued, i.e. two-thirds of the cities were depopulated ghost towns. Where careerists had ruled, tyranny arises only temporarily and locally, and careerism always reasserts itself. If the Romans had not arrived, the rest of the nation would have spent itself as well. Hence, patience! Preparations be made for protracted misery."
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EGON FLAIG Burckhardt asserts that War, if led in a specific manner enhances human existence and creates excellent mental conditions for high cultural achievements.
t. Enhancement of Existence: Heroism \lersus Utilitarianisnt Burckhardt draws a fundamental distinction between two forms of existence along a dividing-line that appears in Homer and Hesiod: that of the heros (i.e. the warrior-hero) and that of the banausos (i.e. the utilitarian trader and craftsman). The upshot of his comparison, illustrated with reference to the Odyssey, reads as follows: Ein starkerer Gegensatz laBt sich allerdings nicht denken als der zwischen dem Banausen und derjenigen Denkweise, die es darauf ankommen la.fit, ob man sterbend dem Feinde Siegesruhm verschafft oder siegend von ihm solchen gewinnt. 26 Burckhardt considers the willingness to risk a violent death a special form of existence. Untainted by any base and craven consideration of a pragmatic or utilitarian nature, the hero distinguishes himself by his ability to develop and sustain a truly aesthetic outlook on life. Burckhardt elevates the powerful presence of such an aesthetic disposition into the defining feature of Western Culture that accounts for its undeniable superiority over all others. In other words, Burckhardt grants the attribute "fully human" only to those who accomplish something special by raising themselves above the level of "mere existence", far above utilitarian ends and material interests. In the lectures On the Study of History Burckhardt sketched a complete theory of the nloral dimension of war. It is important to note that Nietzsche attended some of these lectures, and knew either the manuscript or the main ideas: Ein Volk lernt wirklich seine volle Nationalkraft nur im Kriege kennen, weil sie nur
26 Griechische Kulturgeschichte IV (Ges. Werke, vol. VIII) p. 42. "It is hard to imagine a starker contrast than the one between the banausos and the mentality of those men who put their life at risk in battle in order to hand in death the glory of victory to the enemy or by emerging victoriously themselves to acquire that glory from him."
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PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY AND THEORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY dann vorhanden ist; auf diesem Punct wird es dann suchen mUssen, sie festzuhalten; allgenleine VergroBerung des MaBtstabes. 27 Here Burckhardt advances the following two arguments: first, war is the ideal medium to raise human existence above the basic impulses of nature. If life has an inherent tendency to strive towards a vital summit, then athletic competition in the sense of the Greek agon does not suffice. War mobilizes energies in a much more intensive fashion. Secondly, war sets up standards. The experience of war creates new yardsticks of intensive communication and devotion to a common cause, both in each individual and even more so in the community as a whole. If a people manages to preserve this newly acquired standard of existential intensity, then its ability to muster resources and strive tenaciously for higher goals will result in cultural achievements. In his philosophy of history, a systenlatic correlation exists between the cohesiveness of a civic community and its cultural productivity.28
2. Aestheticizing War It is not astonishing that Burckhardt shapes the contours of a theory of total war avant la lettre. 29 Alongside its moral and social components, war, for Burckhardt, also possessed an aesthetic dimension. At times of war, we witness the "great spectacle" of the "subordination of the entire community under a common goal. "30 What is Burckhardt's rationale for aestheticizing war? Ober das Studium der Geschichte. Der Text der ,Weltgeschichtlichen Betrachtungen' auf Grund der Vorarbeiten von E. Ziegler nach den Handschrifien herausgegeben von P. Ganz, Milnchen 1982, p. 344. "Only in war, only in its struggle with other nations, a people does really become aware of its full national force. For this force manifests itself only in war. The task is to keep it at this level; this results in a general enhancement of the standard." 28 He uses this idea to explain the astonishing dynamic of Athenian activities after the Persian Wars. See Griechische Kulturgeschichte I (Ges. Werke V), p. 208-11. 29 I have elaborated this argument in detail in my essay "Burckhardt, Greek Culture and Modernity" in: ARION (forthconling). 30 The whole quotation in Studium der Geschichte, p. 345: "Sodann enorme sittliche SuperioriUit des Krieges tiber den bloGen gewaltsamen Egoismus des Einzelnen: er entwickelt die Krafte im Dienst eines Allgemeinen und zwar des hochsten Allgemeinen (Der Krieg allein gewahrt den Menschen den groGartigen Anblick der allgemeinen Unterordnung unter ein Allgenleines), und innerhalb 27
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EGON FLAIG War as an aesthetic experience becomes only possible when the different moral reasons for individual and collective sacrifice have ceased to be of any great importance. Hence Burckhardt had to break up the triad of the good, the beautiful, and the true: he historicizes (and thereby relativizes) the good and the true, while exalting the latter as a transhistorical absolute. The beautiful is supposed to be eternally valid. Historiographically speaking, that means that the most disastrous catastrophes offer magnificent spectacles of desperate heroism and total devotion: Ganz anders stellen sich zu unserm GefUhl diejenigen Bevolkerungen, von deren letzten Kampfen und Untergang Kunde erhalten ist: die lycischen Stadte gegen Harpagus, Carthago, Numantia, Jerusalem gegen Titus. Solche scheinen uns aufgenommen in die Reihe von Lehrem und Vorbildem der Menschheit in der Einen groBen Sache: daB man an das Gemeinsame Alles setze und daB das Einzelleben der Gilter hochstes nicht seL SodaB aus ihrem Unglilck ein herbes, aber erhabenes GlUck flir das Ganze ensteht. 31 According to Burckhardt's philosophy of history, catastrophes need to be incorporated into an ideal image, an image of eternal beauty that occidental humanity could hand down from generation to generation through its poets and historians, who are only up to the task when they disregard moral considerations and focus exclusively on the sublime and the consolation that inheres in the beautiful. No doubt, many of these thoughts could be found in the works of other nineteenth-century authors. An intertextual analysis could easily point up the
31
einer Disciplin, welche zugleich die hochste heroische Tugend sich ent UiBt" ("There is, then, an enormous ethical superiority of war vis-a.-vis the merely brutal egotism of the individual: war develops forces that are in the service of a more general good [war alone grants men the great spectacle of a collective's complete subordination to a general goal] and that within a discipline which allows the blossoming of the highest heroic virtue.") Studium der Geschichte, p. 242. "Those populations whose last struggles and decline have come down to us elicit a completely different feeling in us: the Lycian cities against Harpagus, Carthage, Numantia, Jerusalem against Titus. They seem to belong to the ranks of models for humankind in that they teach us the one great lesson: that one has to devote everything to the common cause and that the individual existence is not the highest of goods. So that their misfortune is transformed into a bitter, but sublime happiness, for the whole."
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existing affinities. For present purposes this is not relevant. What concerns us is Burckhardt's peculiar synthesis of these thoughts. He articulates the problem of material interests more radically than other contemporary historians and turns war into that social experience which is capable of silencing them - not any kind of war, but total war to which he attributes a cultural significance of the first order. In a war involving the entire existence of a people, as Burckhardt correctly defines total war, it is highly likely that the losers downright vanish. This destruction yields a double profit: the losers rise in their misfortune above their dull determination by natural instincts and assert their spiritual and cultural calling; they reach a moral end; and posterity delights in the sublime spectacle of catastrophe, thereby experiencing a "herbes aber erhabenes Gluck", a bitter, but sublime happiness. It is difficult not to read these ideas in the context of the aestheticist movement that was gathering momentum in artistic circles in the last third of the nineteenth century and contributed both to the decadent anxieties of the fin de siecle and the vitalist hopes for a cathartic, reden1ptive war which eventually came in 1914.
IV. Reshaping the Tasks of Cultural History Three very different factors can work to sustain the occidental culture in its actual crisis. Firstly a strong susceptibility for classical art helps to maintain abilities and dispositions necessary to keep up the cultural continuity of the West, as has been shown at the beginning of this essay. Secondly, war can be a medium for a transformation of culture which is favourable to the occidental tradition. Finally, it is incun1bent for historiography to draw conclusions from the historical diagnosis of the actual crisis. As historiography occupies a pivotal place in the cultural tradition, Burckhardt is obliged to reshape the tasks of historical education and historiography and to define its form and content. In the Introduction to his Greek Cultural History Burckhardt lines out a programme of the new tasks that historiography is obliged to, given the 'crisis' of historical education at the universities."32
32 Griechische Kulturgeschichte I (G W, V) p. 4.
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EGaN FLAIG The verdicts in this "Introduction" result in a sharp break with the premises of the German Historicism. Burckhardt stakes out the objective of his version of 'History of Culture': It has to map out as precisely as possible the cultural conditions of longue duree which made up the framework for that mental dispositions needed by the Occidental Culture - for its coming into existence and for its ongoing continuity. Das Interesse an der Geschichte ist in hohem Grade abhangig geworden von den allgemeinen Schwingungen des abendlandischen Geistes, von der allgemeinen Richtung unserer Bildung... 33 As the interest of each generation of 'humanistically educated people' in the past is directly dependent on the "allgemeine Richtung unserer Bildung" (general direction of our educational culture), Burckhardt cannot but stress that it is of prime importance to take influence on this 'orientation of our Bildung'. Otherwise we risk loosing the interest itself. Thus, Cultural History has to become the main locus of historiologic selfreflection; others may care about a million details; but Cultural History has to give account of the "wirklich Wissenswurdigste". 34 In contradistinction to antiquarian research and to the narrativist history of events he maps out the contours of what 'I-Iistory of Culture' should be. Without rebuffing the antiquarian studies of August Boekh completely, he defines his 'History of Culture' as a clear counter-programme. And in a radical tum against the history of events he underscores: Wir dagegen haben Gesichtspunkte flir die Ereignisse aufzustellen. 35 Against both sides he raises Cultural History to the rank of an epistemic instance: it is bound to draw the dividing line between what is necessary to know and what is not, which straightens the coordinates attributing nleaning to past events and facts. Modem educated people must be equipped with a well defined interest in knowledge so as to be able to acquire that minimal quantum of knowledge about the past which allows the European cultural continuum to subsist. Therefore, he insists that the prerequisite for a real interest in the Hellenic past is to be equipped with a 'humanistische Bildung'.
33 Griechische Kulturgeschichte I (GW, V), pp. 4f 34 Griechische Kulturgeschichte I (G W, V), p. 4. 35 Griechische Kulturgeschichte I (GW, V), p. 4: "We, on the other hand, have to formulate the criteria for the events".
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PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY AND THEORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY Mutatis mutandis this equipment is necessary for a deeper understanding of all times of the European past. Which and what kind of knowledge is worth to be acquired by these interested people? A decision must be taken. The production of knowledge by universities is totally unable to shape semantic criteria which could help to decide. Historians who are snowed-under by the spadework of detail-research do not consider that it needs only small changes within the fragile ensemble of the modem Culture to invalidate our whole historical knowledge and to delegitimize historical research on a large university scale. Some changes within the semantic structure of the modem Culture may be sufficient to bring about this result. The production of knowledge by universities is totally unable to do this. The status of scientific knowledge is at stake. Burckhardt constructs a preknowledge which is able to select what is worth to be known and eliminates what is not. A pre-knowledge is very close to a sort of transcendental scheme of historical understanding. It is not by chance that Burckhardt constructs this pre-knowledge very much like the idealistic philosophy constructed the concept of taste: Flir Gelehrsamkeit sorgt die jetzige historisch-antiquarische Literatur; - w i r pHidieren fUr ein lebenslang aushaltendes Mittel der Bildung und des Genusses. 36 Interest in the past and in the heirloom of European Culture cannot be the result of a blind research and proliferation of historical details. It depends on the mental disposition of the educated classes. This mental disposition is intricately bound up with 'GenujJ', aesthetic pleasure. Therefore, it is a special form of aesthetic taste. As a matter of consequence Burckhardt favours the 'dilettant' as the saviour figure of Culture. His concept of Cultural history is made for' dilettants' and it seeks to create exactly that 'dilettantic' disposition of mind. This disposition is the modem form of that aesthetic view onto the world which took its origin in Greek Culture.
36 Griechische Kulturgeschichte I (GW, V), p. 9.
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Chapter 6
Historiography as Political Activity: Heinrich von Treitschke and the Historical Reconstruction of Politics KARLH. METZ
I. II. III.
Introduction: Politics as History Explication: Historicity and Political Action Conclusion: Descending the Mountain ofNebo
I. Introduction: Politics as History When you hear the name Treitschke, l you notice the smell of something like sulphur, you perceive a vague idea of that diabolic moment which sometimes attaches itself to names, to a "Machiavelli" or a "Hobbes". Smellthinking of this kind is an act of political correctness. It defines public enemies and transforms them into emotional ones against whom we react personally: Give me someone to detest, and I know who I am. In any case, political action becomes a fiery reaction against enemies, and enemies are those who endanger the stability of an established system whose legitimacy they deny. In the Treitschkean perspective, too, politics were a fire giving off light and heat but at the same time posing a threat of destruction. It is the sensation of life you experience when you approach fire, it makes you alive and wide awake. This existential experience of politics forms the political man, and Treitschke There is a political biography of Treitschke by ANDREAS DORPALEN: Heinrich von Treitschke, New Haven (Yale University Press) 1957. His work, taken as a historiographical pattern, is analysed by KARL H. METZ: Grundformen historiographischen Denkens, MUnchen (Fink) 1979, pp. 237ff.
HISTORIOGRAPHY AS POLITICAL ACTIVITY was always more of a political man than a historian. l-Iistory had to be political history, because the essence of social action was politics, Le. a struggle for power in an ever-changing context. If, then, politics fonned the centre of history, historical writing had to be perceived as political activity, for how could you speak about the fire, if you did not feel its heat?2 The true historian, therefore, experiencing the political struggles of his time, writes contemporary history, a history that is meaningful to us, because it is still influential, forming the structures of institutions and ideologies which regulate the present. The historian writes about his time, in his time, for his time. He is a messenger of the past for the future, but he approaches the future only through the present. The future is the history of today; if we fail now, we will miss it. This insistence on the present is significant. It distinguishes the Treitschkean position from the one held by Machiavelli and Hobbes. Adopting the liberal view, Treitschke interprets history as progress and European history as progress towards the nation state. Neither Machiavelli's "Prince" nor the Hobbesian "Leviathan" perceive of the present in this way, despite sonle Machiavellian dream of a free Italy. To them, history does not change the pattern of politics, analytically understood and, perhaps, geometrically constructed. Exactly this: the "mathematical" mind, armed with a timeless, sceptical perspective, made Hobbes, made Machiavelli a great name in the history of political thought. Treitschke, however, failed. He performed analytical shortcuts, responding to political challenges, presented as polemics. These analytical shortcuts, leading to verdicts, made him influential as well as notorious in his time: they prevented his becoming a great name, stinking of sulphur, but fascinating. Hobbes and Machiavelli outlived the states they had praised, and they survived in fame. Treitschke did not.
II. Explication: Historicity and Political Action You cannot know what history means, you can only know what you mean when you look at history. No true knowledge can be gained by perceiving
2
K. H.: Grundformen, p. 301; 1912-1920, vol. III, p. 178.
METZ,
HEINRICH VON TREITSCHKE:
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KARLH.METZ history from a distance referred to as objectivity or contemplation. Knowledge results from action or from a mind inclined to action. Knowledge rationalises action. This is a position deduced from historicism and, yet, in opposition to its quietist interpretation posed by Ranke, as Treitschke saw it. 3 If time is change, nothing can be stable - except your decision. Thus, it is not simply continuity that gives legitimacy to action, because a new epochal tendency can break continuity, as it does in the case of the nation which transformed the state, deposing regimes and princes. Legitimacy itself is a historical concept like all social institutions, be it law, economy or the form of social order. To recognise such a tendency and to transform it into politics makes man's social existence meaningful. The social sense thus gained is neither relativistic nor absolute. It is not relativistic, because it performs, so to speak, history's work in the present, and it is not absolute, because it moves before an open horizon that recedes, whenever it is approached. There is no ending of history, no final state, therefore you never reach the future, you only reach out for it. Here is no room for "dream politics" (Idea/poUtik), Le. politics that demand utopia, the ideal state and nothing but that. Nor is there a place for standstill politics, performing dead politics for dead days. Instead, a sort of politics is necessary that moves between the extremes: "realistic politics" (Rea/poUtik) pursuing an ideal with a sense of compronlise. Treitschke's rejection of dream politics corresponds with his criticism of any "pure" theory of politics, or of society, economy and law. Social theory is always historical, bound to place and time, and so is society.4 A pure theory would reduce reality to some geometrical construction, just as dream politics does, Jacobinism or Socialism would transform reality into a nightmare. No theory can, therefore, leave the realm of history and neither can any form of politics. 5 The nucleus of politics is power and the nucleus of power is force, because the dynamics of politics is the struggle for power and its first and last criterion is force: the ability to use it and the ability to prevent its collapse into sheer violence. Politics, perceived as struggle, distinguishes friend from enemy, but historical, "realistic" politics accepts neither eternal enemies nor revolutionary violence, because it rejects the utopian absolutist impulse. An enemy can become a friend and vice versa, which implies that he always 3 4 5
Briefe Ill, p. 361; Briefe II, p. 351. H. VON TREITSCHKE, Die Gesellschafiswissenschafi. Ein kritischer Versuch (1859), Darmstadt (Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft) 1980. Briefe II, pp. 124, 301, 345; Briefe I, p. 203.
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HISTORIOGRAPHY AS POLITICAL ACTIVITY remains human: He may leave us, but not mankind. History, or better historical consciousness, keeps us in balance, shaky and unstable, to be sure, a vague borderline, often approached, sometimes even crossed, but never left behind for good. This is the Treitschkean paradox: the ambivalence of an activist attitude undermined by relativity. Treitschke himself tried to solve it by using historical relativity as a tool to question the legitimacy of the present and of its establishment, to transform the eternity of the present, as assumed by those who profit from it, into a time of change. Historicity, thus, meant the historisation of the present, it meant its openness towards the future, it meant political commitment as the expression of life. Historicity implied participation, but not in the sense of using it as contemplative knowledge of the past to enrich us as persons, because knowledge was only of value if it led to action. To inspire action, guided by historical knowledge, which made sure that you acted in accordance with a great epochal tendency, was the goal and social justification of historical writing: its indispensable service to society. Only such historically enlightened politics could move towards the future without destroying the past. The destruction of the past led to Dantonian fanaticism and Bonapartist ideology; it led to forms of political consciousness shaking the very foundations of the political community. The French Revolution as a leap into the future was the focus of Treitschke's critique of a political radicalism which reduced history to a heap of citations and gestures to be plundered at will. History, historical.consciousness keeps politics within a pattern of continuity, within a pattern of interrelated change. Because "idealism", Treitschke was convinced, "clears up the mystery of history better than anything else", 6 politics had to be primarily politics of consciousness just as historiography had to use the history of social thought as its starting point for its enquiries into social action. Man was an image-maker, he needed justifications, declarations, insinuations, communications. This stress on consciousness as the dominant factor of action and, therefore, on the ideological formation of consciousness as the basic factor of politics, is typical of any activist historiography. The historian as an intellectual, Le. as a producer of words, explanations, and images, needs a conception of the human as being ordered in his behaviour by reflections and knowledge. Or, to put it more precisely, he needs such a conception if he wants to appeal to convictions and decisions, 6
Cited by W. BUBMANN: "Treitschke als Politiker", Historische Zeitschrift, 177 (1954), p. 255.
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KARLH. METZ and the activist historian is not one who whispers to the powerful few, but he is one who cries out to the many. Historical, or "realistic" politics 7 is, then, the combination of two factors, namely social consciousness and force, reflected upon from a perspective of centuries. History contributes the experience of time, duration and change to the study of politics. History, politically understood, is not fatality: it is freedom which realises itself, whenever one interprets limits as potentials for success and not as walls to be exploded. You can only understand what you love: this is the first principle of Treitschkean historiography. "Bloodless objectivity", he insists, "is contrary to the true historical sense". 8 Universal love is impossible, because the essence of love is inclusion at the price of exclusion. As in life, so in history. You cannot love all, accept all, or you will miss the true meaning of a historical situation, which is characterised by conflict and decision. Therefore, if you want to understand history, you have to take sides, and if you want to love, you have to opt for one or the other. Historiography makes you vividly alive by pushing you into love and emotion as do political decisions here and now. It seems ridiculous to think "that only those are able to come to an independent political judgement who hardly care about the state," and who stay aloof of political strife. 9 Neither the rigid moralism of an ideal politics, exemplified by liberalism and its representative historians F. C. Schlosser and G. G. Gervinus, nor the moral quietism of a Ranke can help us in our endeavour to face the present and recognise it as a challenge that imbues our social existence with meaning. What we need is a history that combines the moral impulse, indispensable to any guiding idea of social order, with an insight into the contemporary situation, and its potentials and limits. What we need is a kind of historical writing that "narrates andjudges".IO Historiography tells the past as present by looking for constellations in the past that are comparable to present ones. It tells the present as past by asking for the rise of the actual situation and its problems in the course of the last century. All history is, 7
Cf. Briefr II, p. 437; LUDWIG AUGUST VON ROCHAU: Grundsiitze der Real-politik, angewendet auf die staatlichen Zustiinde Deutschlands (1853), ed. by H. U.
8
Briefe II, p. 351. Ibid., p. 72.
Wehler, Frankfurt a.M. (Ullstein) 1972. 9
10 H. VON TREITSCHKE: Deutsche Geschichte im Neunzehnten Jahrhundert, First Part (1879), Konigstein (Athena-urn) 1981, p. VII.
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HISTORIOGRAPHY AS POLITICAL ACTIVITY therefore, contemporary history, asking for the past because it asks for the future. The three great questions of German unification dominate, therefore, Treitschke's historical works before 1871. Should the new Germany be a centralised or a federal state? Should she include Austria or accept Prussian dominance? Should parliament or monarchy be the decisive political factor? Reflecting on the failure of 1848, a personal experience which had deeply moved him, Treitschke concluded: "You, cannot storm the entrenchments of Alsen with an ideal spirit of the nation." II History shows that ideals must be compromised, or nothing is achieved at all. This was exemplified by the United Dutch Provinces in their struggle with the Spanish or the rise of a free Italy forcing Austria out of the country. 12 France is the great example of political failure. France tried to destroy history in order to start anew. But Europe was no virgin country, it was imbued with culture and violence, with memories of a thousand years, with acres tilled since time immemorial. In Europe you could not build from the ground, sinlply because there was no ground, only the foundation walls, ruins, buildings of former generations. In Europe you could not break with history once and for all, you had to accommodate yourself to it, not by denying your ideals, but by adjusting them to a situation that was the result of a long historical process. However, France disturbed him in yet another respect, for it showed that you could, indeed, storm entrenchments with the help of such a thing as the ideal spirit of the nation. Perhaps the French experience - the fall of the Bastille, the ignominious collapse of an ancient monarchy, the terror, Bonapartism - left the deepest imprints of all on his consciousness. The chronic instability of the French state after 1789 was, thus, the result of an act of political madness, of an attempt to have future without history. France became the ideological battlefield of the nineteenth century 13, and by reflecting upon it, Treitschke discovers a new type of politics that springs from a state of broken history: "democratic despotism" or "Bonapartism".14 Here, history is conceived as waste from which one picks up pieces of decoration, a Roman H. VON TREITSCHKE: Aufsiitze, Reden, Briefe, Meersburg (Hendel) 1929, vol. I, p. 571. 12 TREITSCHKE: "Die Republik der Vereinigten Niederlande"; "Cowour", ct: Aufsiitze, Reden, Briefe, vol. II. 13 TREITSCHKE: "Frankreichs Staatsleben und der Bonapartismus", cf. Aufsiitze, Reden, Briefe, vol. II, p. 109. 14 Ibid., pp. 321£ II
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KARLH. METZ toga or Ceasar's laurel crown, reminiscences of an old king or a new dictator, all exchangeable at will. Democratic despotism is the result of an understanding of politics that no longer accepts history as experience and limitation. It is remarkable that two intellectuals as different as Treitschke and Karl Marx wrote their most poignant essays on Bonapartism, that novel phenomenon which disturbed them profoundly, since it did not fit into the familiar pattern of conservatism, liberalism and socialisnl. Treitschke's diagnosis, sharpened by polemics, was that of a history turned upside down by revolution, a history which offered only pieces of decoration, but no legitimacy drawing on some continuity of the political order. Thus, the construct of a "fable convenue",15 of a political myth for the millions, becomes important. Bonapartism uses this fable in a more cynical way; it reduces politics to a theatre, while Jacobinism, the other ideological output of revolution, transforms it into a sermon preached in a most serious manner. The fatal weakness of Bonapartism lies in its descent from Machiavelli. The Florentine philosopher liberated the state from the church, but he still accepted that ethics was part of the spiritual realm of the church. Therefore, morality and politics were divided and this, Treitschke declares, spells destruction to the community. 16 .In Europe, Christianity is the moral code: Christianity. interpreted as ethics, not as confession or church. Politics, Le. the activity of leading the state, produces its own moral obligations, corresponding to Christian principles as long as the basic law of statehood is not questioned, namely the pursuit of the state's selfpreservation. I? Impartial administration of the law, personal liberty, freedom of conscience, local self-government, and avoidance of unnecessary wars are political obligations of this kind. Human rights, the result of a historical process in the West, were also accepted by Treitschke. Historical interpretation of rights inlplies perceiving them as rights within limits set by culture and societal development. To interpret them as absolute, however, means to explode them, because only history produces cultural· meaning. 18 Because of its absolutist pattern, the revolutionary conception of "fraternity" or "equality" leads to death or servitude. "La fratemite ou la mort!" is the beginning of political madness signifying the end of politics. Everything that is cultural, is histori15 Briefe 11, pp. 112,263,347,459; Auftiitze, Reden, Briefe 111, pp. 11, 15. 16 H. VON TREITSCHKE: Politik. Vorlesungen gehalten an der Universitiit zu Berlin, ed. by M. Comicelius, Leipzig (Hirzel) 41918, vol. I, pp. 90ff. 17 Ibid., pp. lOOff. 18 Ibid., p. 189.
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HISTORIOGRAPHY AS POLITICAL ACTIVITY cal, too. Time is a process in which growth, change, destruction and continuity are mixed up, forming patterns of complex individuality. Treitschke believes in progress, but it is a progress that cannot be described as a homogeneous, uniform development which ends in a final stage, predictable once and for all. Thus, Treitschke moves between historicism and liberalism: he insists on the relativity of values and on the necessity of relating behaviour and judgements to the historical situation in which they were formed. 19 However, he also views history, or better, the history of Europe, as a course of uneven improvement with great losses and great gains, but in the long run moving towards personal liberty as the noble aim of human endeavour. Slavery and bondage, for example, had their historical place. Now they have been abolished forever. This is a good thing, because the idea that one man is the property of another man is contrary to our belief in personal liberty, which again, is fundamental to modem society.20 Thus, the historicist answer to the relativist dilemma is Treitschke's answer, too, though his is accentuated by activism. It is activism, not voluntarism. It acts, not because it desperately grasps for an experience of life, but it acts in order to do the work of the day, trusting not so much in God, but more in a history that makes sense. His antipathy against the agnostic philosophers of Basel drew its strength from his conviction that agnosticism disappeared, when reasoning was tamed by politics. If you take your point of view high up in the "clouds", you miss life; you cal1not do justice to reality and to people who try to master it. Any flight into art and beauty was in vain, not only because it caused the focus of politics to become an issue of secondary importance, but also because it produced a notion of the present as decay and weakened the will to act. Treitschke appreciated Jacob Burckhardt's book on the Renaissance, he was a friend of Franz Overbeck, and he felt the intellectual power of Friedrich Nietzsche, and yet he had to tum against them, knowing that he could not join them without losing his Archimedian point of ethico-practical history. There is no general theory of politics, there is only a plurality of historical reconstructions, concerning individual developments. Any realistic conception of politics is contemporary history, which draws its relevance from the political commitment of the historian. Machiavelli, for example, wrote contemporary history. If you criticise him, you have to consider the situation in which he experienced politics and in which he gave advice. Apart from the 19 Ibid., pp. 4£, 367. 20 Ibid., p. 169.
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KARLH.METZ basic law of the state, namely its will to survive, there is nothing unchangeable in politics, except perhaps the necessity to balance force and consent, because no state can exist for long if it is not maintained by popular consent. 2l Such a "realistic" conception of politics had been advanced, according to Treitschke, by Alexis de Tocqueville, by Franz Lieber, the promoter of Political Science in the USA, or by Alexander Hamilton, one of the founding fathers of the United States and a contributor to the "Federalist Papers".22 Now, Hamilton still had argued within the context of natural law, but since then man had seen through the illusory character of such a right, and the Hamilton argument had found its true basis in historical reasoning. Names or titles are semantic illusions, they become meaningful only when they are understood historically, i.e. related to the situation in which they were used. 23 Any general theory, so Treitschke supposes, is just a system of names. In order to communicate ideas you need names. In order to organise information you need them, too. However, names remain labels without content, and only history can make them meaningful. Treitschke uses "names" as signposts showing the way to contemporary history and, thus, to the chances and limits of attempting to realise goals. 24 The aim is a kind of reasoned political activity on the side of the citizens as well as on the side of the statesmen. "Politics is applied history",25 or better: Politics is the application of historical experience, mainly as formulated by historiography, to the conflicts and problems of the present. Consequently, historical politics cannot be universal. It remains a conception with empty spaces and contradictions. Every present produces its own, specific history, which cannot be predicted by the historical experience of times past. Secondly, no situation of bitter conflict can be resolved into harmony. Theoretically, any collapse of the state is awful, therefore, no political theory can justify revolution or civil war on "moral" grounds, because then it would surrender to religion, fanaticisnl and the chaos of individual absolutism in moral questions. Yet, history demonstrates the futility of any theoretical rejection of revolution. Revolution is a historical fact, and more than that, it is propelled by some kind of moral reaction against a comipted
PoUlik, vol. II, p. 368. 22 ~ETZ: Grundformen,pp. 310, 363ff. 23 Ibid., p. 362. 24 Ibid., pp. 374ff. 25 PoUlik, vol. I, p. 2. 21
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HISTORIOGRAPHY AS POLITICAL ACTIVITY regime that has lost popular consent. 26 Moreover, to resist a ruler who violates conscience is an act that can regenerate the essence of ethics in a man, in a society, and save them from decay. Treitschke thinks of Luther and he offers no answer, but the paradox of a "yes" and a "no" at the same time. Neither historiography nor political action are able to resolve the paradox, but the historian can understand it, while the politician has to fight it. Treitschke, however, was both historian and politician, and this was his strength as well as his dilemma. As long as he remained a critic of official policy, the historian and the political activist were united by a common cause. But when the "prophet" arrived at the promised land, the dilemma became obvious. Satire, perhaps his main intellectual weapon, was reduced to polemics, when he turned from criticism to apology. Finally, German unification was realised by Prussia and yet, there was still quarrel, even strife in this happy new land. The historian Treitschke should have known better, but the activist was angry and understood nothing. Climbing the mountain is tiresome, nevertheless it is full of expectation. But descending the mountain of Nebo is quite another thing, for its easiness is burdened by the loss of hope of the great horizon that waits for us. Treitschkes's controversial attacks on German Jews and on the group of social reformers led by Gustav Schmoller were misguided, because they did not achieve their declared goal, namely to strengthen the new state, and they alienated many friends and collaborators of former times. 27 The critical potential of a politically committed historiography was lost and with it the idea of combining critical history with historicism, the will to act with the reflective power of a historical mind.
III. Conclusion: Descending the Mountain of Nebo After victory, a political idea is at once verified and nullified, unless one succeeds in transforming it into a policing myth, a ''fable convenue" defining political correctness. Jules Michelet's historiographic praise of the French
26 Ibid., pp. 131 ff. 27 Cf. W. 1965.
BOEHLICH
(Ed.): Der Berliner Antisemitismusstreit, Frankfurt a.M. (lnsel)
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KARLH. METZ Revolution28 became essential for the "mystique republicaine" of the new French state after 1871. Treitschkean history, too, played an important role in the formation of correct thinking in the Germany of Prussian descent. This was acknowledged 'by the allied philosophers in the trench, who fought the First World War as a war of civilisations and who gratefully took Treitschke as a symbol for a political regime that showed how detestable the enemy was, detestable on moral grounds and not simply because he was a rival in the struggle for influence and power. 29 Using his "Politics" as evidence, a text . composed of notes put down by students during a lecture, they aimed at agitation. Of course, an Englishman nurtured by Whig history had to be scandalised by many of Treitschke's remarks and judgements, for there was only one true pattern of progress and Macaulay had described it, a description that became a prescription for all who claimed to be civilised. Therefore, not just England and Germany, but Whiggism and Historicism confronted each other. It was more than an intellectual and cultural confrontation: It was a political confrontation, too, because Greater Britain, as well as the Greater United States later in the century, was grasping for a conception of historically justified politics, one which combined the claim to global validity with the glory of the one and unique nation that had created it. The Great and "Greater" Britain was a nation of global possessions and ambitions, a nation justifYing her civilising mission in India and Africa with Macaulayan progress. The "Little" Germany of Treitschke's vision, which was close to Bismarck's policy for a "satiated" Germany, did not aim at such a view, she called only for the position of a great power among other great powers. Politics, thus, remained historically and geographically limited, knowledge for here and now, not wisdom for all days nor prescription for mankind. In his beautiful book on History and Historians in the Nineteenth Century, George P. Gooch spoke about Ranke with admiration, even love: Here was a nlan who had understood that the house of Clio was a temple, not a battlefield. The search for truth, not the call for action is the end of historical
28 Cf. K. H. METZ: "Die Resurrektion der Geschichte. Ein Beitrag zum historischen Denken 1. Michelets", Archiv fur Kulturgeschichte, 65 (1983). 29 Cf E. LEIPPRAND: Treitschke im englischen Urteil, Stuttgart (Kohlhammer) 1931; 1. MACCABE: Treitschke and the Great War, London ( Unwin) 1914; E. BARKER: Nietzsche and Treitschke: the worship of power in modern Germany, London (Oxford University Press) 41914.
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HISTORIOGRAPHY AS POLITICAL ACTIVITY writing. For Treitschke, therefore, Gooch felt no sympathy.30 To look at history from a distance allows one to see the faces of men without feeling the heat of their breath. One experiences the distance as hermeneutic space. Historiography becomes an act of contemplation on men: not on humankind in general, but on a pluralistic universe which has no end nor meaning recognisable to us, but only ends and meanings innumerable. Truth is an answer with many questions, but if you want to act, it is better to arrive at answers and to avoid too many questions. Treitschke tried to demonstrate that it was possible to combine the novel pattern of historical thinking with a position of valuejudgement and political participation. Such a synthesis can be achieved best by writing contemporary history, which is knowledge gained by partisanship. If there is just one permanence in social life, it is the permanence of contemporaneity. Man is always a contemporary, he lives within a contemporary framework of conditions, problems and values, he thinks about the past by contemporizing it. Historiography analyses the past in the context of present problems and questions: Not just because this is the only way to understand it, but also because this is the only means to make the historiographical activity useful to society. If we try to put together the essentials of Treitschkean thought, we could summarize them as follows: First of all, it is characteristic of his thinking that he develops his categories not in an abstract or "mathematical" manner, but in the course of his narrative. Thinking is an activity that forms and alters its analyzing concepts according to the events or structures discussed. These concepts are not defined once and for all, they are produced anew whenever a new situation is under discussion, and they claim meaning only insofar as this situation is concerned. Such an idea of the historicity of words and concepts results from the conviction that everything which is social is historic, too, and because it is historic it is relative to the genetic pattern in which it occurred and relative to the observer who constructs it as a narrative meaningful to him. Contemporary history, being the history of our present mind and state, is the history nearest to our problems and questions: It is the history we need most. Contemporary history is innovation: Those who want to write it are those who want to change it. Therefore, it is no accident that historicism was the intellectual tool of the "Prussian" school of history, i.e. of those who struggled for a "German Revolution" in the sense expressed by Disraeli. His30 G.P. GOOCH: Geschichte und Geschichtsschreibung im 19. Jahrhundert (1913), Frankfurt a.M. (S. Fischer) 1964, p. 168.
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KARLH. METZ toriographical historicism in the nineteenth century implied a policy of innovation rejecting one of tradition and legitimacy as incorporated by Austria. That Austria did not participate in the great drive towards a historicist perspective of history and politics, that her leading intellectuals defended "mathematical" positions (e.g. in economics or logical positivism) just shows how much historicism reflected a specific political situation. Historicist historiography of the Treitschkean type, however, is emphatic communication urging for a "better future". The result is a text that longs for a reader. To attract him the literary quality of the text is important, and Treitschke knew this. He was not afraid of literature because the literary style was the medium transporting meaning to the public. The message to be transported was the idea of the nation as a cultural entity with political ambitions, i.e. the claim to form a nation state, a claim favourable to Prussia but destructive to Austria. The present is the provisional finality of history, it is.the goal of historical writing. The present time is our lifetime, and life is identified by activity. Activity for activity's sake remains blind, but historiography can enlighten it by pointing to limits and conditions as results of specific historic developments. Conditions that are historic are relative, too. They can be altered within a framework of continuity, breaking which would spell disaster. Acting responsibly, enlightened by historiography, means to realise liberty, and this is the sense of human existence in the polity. It is the Treitschkean message, spoken with the heat of enthusiasnl and soaked with prejudice and partisanship, but spoken still.
References
BARKER, E.: Nietzsche and Treitschke: the worship of power in modern Germany, London (Oxford University Press) 41914. BOEHLICH, W. (Ed.): Der Berliner Antisemitismusstreit, Frankfurt a.M. (Insel) 1965. BUBMANN, W.: "Treitschke als Politiker", Historische Zeitschrift, 177 (1954). DORPALEN, A.: Heinrich von Treitschke, New Haven (Yale University Press) 1957. GOOCH, G.P.: Geschichte und Geschichtsschreibung im 19. Jahrhundert (1913), Frankfurt a.M. (S. Fischer) ]964. LEIPPRAND, E.: Treitschke im englischen Urteil, Stuttgart (Kohlhammer) 1931.
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HISTORIOGRAPHY AS POLITICAL ACTIVITY MACCABE, 1.: Treitschke and the Great War, London (Unwin) 1914. METZ, K.H.: Grundformen historiographischen Denkens, Miinchen (Fink) 1979. METZ, K.H.: "Die Resurrektion der Geschichte. Ein Beitrag zum historischen Denken 1. Michelets", Archivfur Kulturgeschichte~65 (1983). ROCHAu, L.A. v.: Grundsiitze der Realpolitik, angewendet auf die staatlichen Zustande Deutschlands (1853), ed. by H. U. Wehler, Frankfurt a.M. (Ullstein) 1972. TREITSCHKE, H.v.: Die Republik der vereinigten Niederlande, Berlin (Reimer) 18XX (PreuBische Jahrbiicher, Bd. 24). TREITSCHKE, H.v.: Briefe, ed. by. Max Comicelius, 3 Vol., Leipzig (Hirzel) 19121920. TREITSCHKE, H. v.: Politik. Vorlesungen gehalten ander Universitiit zu Berlin, ed. by Max Comicelius, Leipzig (Hirzel) 4) 918. TREITSCHKE, H.v.: Aufsiitze, Reden und Briefe, ed. by Karl Martin Schiller, Meersburg (Hendel) 1929. TREITSCHKE, H.v.: Die Gesellschaftswissenschaft. Ein kritischer Versuch (1859), Dannstadt (Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft) 1980. TREITSCHKE, H.v.: Deutsche Geschichte im Neunzehnten Jahrhundert, First Part (1879), Konigstein (Athenaum) 1981.
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Chapter 7
Literary Criticism and Historical Science: The Textuality of History in the Age of Goethe and Beyond DANIEL FULDA
I. II. III.
The Texts of History Narrativism and the Origin of 'The One History' in the 18th Century The Contribution of Art to the Shaping of History as Knowledge
Which methods and perspectives of literary criticism can contribute to describe the unique character of historical thought, the epistemological status of historical knowledge as well as the methodology of historical science in its complexity? With the title "Textuality of History", that particular aspect is characterised by which the study of literary criticism primarily presents its observations on history and its discipline. The epistemological potential of such a method of observation, especially for the study of historicism, will be proposed in this article in three steps. After a short explanation dealing with the meaning of'Textuality of History', the first chapter introduces the consciousness of that textuality already possessed by historicism, when it used the topos of history as a book. The second chapter deals with the systematic explanation of this particular textuality. In this connection, the relation between history and narrative must also be discussed along with the peculiarity of the concept of 'the one History' described by Reinhart Koselleck which emerged in the latter half of the 18th century. The third and simultaneously most extensive chapter undertakes the attempt to explain the 'rise of histori-
LITERARY CRITICISM AND HISTORICAL SCIENCE cism' as a literary analogous textualisation of historical thought and scientific historical activity. 1
I. The Texts of History To conceive history, metaphorically speaking, as a text or as a book to be read is not just one of the oldest but also one of the most relevant topics of historical thought. 2 The starting point of this idea in the method of history should not create much of a problem: In the medium of texts, history at first appears in various sources which are the basis of historical research. Only these sources still give evidence of past actions and social structures on which history attempts to throw light. Even though the past in question is relatively recent and gives one the opportunity to gain insight into it by speaking to contemporary witnesses, the historian is all the same involved with texts, in this case, mainly oral in nature. Even non-textual or semi-textual sources such as various archaeological finds, historical buildings, seals, tables etc. finally come under the regimen of texts in the event of them being subjected to verification and interpretation of sources. We also find history in a textual form wherever the historian puts down his knowledge of history, Of, to be more precise, wherever he develops this knowledge, for both, thought and word, cannot be epistemologically separated. 3 The knowledge represented in a text thus cannot be found anywhere else outside that text, in any case it does not possess the same marked character. Eventually, the discipline of history emerges as the historians' collective endeavour only by the exchange of texts, mainly those published, hut apart from that, also those oral in nature. Thus, working with texts as his basis, the historian goes on to produce texts. 'History as text' most certainly lneans something much more fundamentaL It indicates that the structural pattern of History (indicated in the follow-
2 3
The author would like to refer in part to some of his own research, cf. FULDA (1999). - I am grateful to Shahnoor Sheryari for the translation of this essay. Cf. DEMANDT (1978, pp. 379-92). Forerunners of the topos date back to the Old Testament. Notes to philosophy of language, explanations and functional requirements of the knowledge of History by Wilhelm von Humboldt, cf. PRUFER (1996, pp. 150-7, 164-6).
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DANIEL FULDA ing text by a majuscule), with the help of which we organize the past and connect it with the events of the present and the future, is a product of texts. This process of events, which we call History, is not merely represented and appreciated in texts, but at first constitutes itself in texts. Only when written by the historian do these texts give the past that particular structure which clearly identifies it as 'History'. In other words, the term 'history' does not represent a structure in the past, but rather portrays a conceptual pattern borne by texts which only then enables us to see the 'past', along with our present and the expected future, in that specific genetic context familiar to us. The linguistic and epistemological postulates claiming that textuality cannot be circumvented does not, in this regard, simply undermine the 'realistic' referential assumptions of numerous historians. 4 The concept of History by itself appears as a textual construction. This proposition seeks, by introducing two important points, to extend beyond the topos of history as a book. The activity of reading a given text has now been taken over by producing a text. The historical matter meant to be read must first be written down. And the textual quality of 'the' History doesn't merely have the status of a metaphor, but it also represents an epistemological finding. During the last two decades, the discussion on the textuality of 'History' has played a key role in both, the theory of history as well as literary criticism. 5 However, it has hardly ever been put into question what our interest concerning this particular textuality can do to contribute towards explaining the emergence of modern historical thought ('modern' here refers to the fundamentals developed during the 'Sattelzeit' (pivotal period) around 1800). Even those texts which create a certain meaning of history are conditioned by their historical context and are subject to change. If we want to see at what point in time and in which way historical thought following the concept of the 'one History' has developed, it is necessary to examine those texts in which this process has been effected. To analyse the structure of those texts would then also mean to disclose the structure of what is known to us as 'History'. The reason is that the text which generates the characteristic structure of events and knowledge, viz. History, must have a characteristic structure on its part.
4 5
Cf. Cf.
WHITE
(1989). (1989);
VEESER
ANKERSMIT/KELLNER
EGGERT/PROFITLICHIScHERPE
(1995);
ZAGORIN
(1999);
114
(1990);
BERKHOFER
FULDA/TSCHOPP
(2001).
(1995);
LITERARY CRITICISM AND HISTORICAL SCIENCE The history of the topos of History as a book indicates that the correlation between History and Text has certainly undergone historical change. As pointed out by Hans Blumenberg, this concept is derived from the previously held perception, existing over the Middle Ages, of Nature as a book, in which God is revealed to mankind. 6 In German-speaking. countries, we first come across this transfer by Johann Georg Hamann, later described in detail by Johann Gottfried Herder. Herder perceives "die Dinge der Welt als Worte eines groj3en Buches [ ..], in welchern wir den Sinn des unbekannten LJrhebers lesen" Le. he sees "the things of the world as words of a great book in which we confront the meaning given by the unknown creator".7 Applied to history this would mean that the centuries form syllables, the nations "letters and perhaps even punctuation marks" the significance of which can only be concluded from their position in the entity.8 The framework of this textualization is still theological in nature: History, according to Herder, is the "great book of God".9 Apart from this idea, he sees man as cooperating in composing this book and definitely as an author of great genius, for only his synthetic observation can behold that which is otherwise only perceived in small fragments. tO Subsequently, it had become self-evident to historians of the 19th century to speak of the book of history (" Buch der Geschichte") in the sense of a literary structure of the past in question. I I Even the theoretician Johann Gustav Droysen believes it can only be possible to understand the order of things and the meaning of the whole ("Sinn des Ganzen") according to the nlodel of those texts which flow from the creative poetic spirit
Cf. BLUMENBERG (1981, p. 178). Textualization of History in the work of Herder was thoroughly investigated by YOM HOFE (1984). 7 HERDER: Eine Metakritik zur Kritik der reinen Vernunft [1799; Against Pure Reason], in: HERDER (1998, pp. 303-640, see p. 472). 8 HERDER: Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit [1774; This, too, a Philosophy ofHistory], in: HERDER (1994, pp. 9-107, see pp. 105-6). 9 Ibid., p. 106. 10 Cf. HERDER: "Shakespeare" [1773], in: HERDER (1993, pp. 498-521, see pp. 50910). 11 RANKE: "Uber die Trennung und Einheit von Deutschland" (1832; "The Division and Unification of Germany"), in: RANKE (1867-1890, vol. 49/59, pp. 134-72, see p. 172). 6
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DANIEL FULDA ("schopferischen Dichtergeist").12 The literary text offers the point of comparison in order to explain the assumed structure of history. This application of the book-metaphor (i.e. the metaphor of history as a book) does not mean that history is only constructed when it becomes a written text. An important step in that direction is made by Wilhelm Dilthey in whose work the historistic concept of 'History as text' reaches its peak. Dilthey ignores the divine author who had till then confirmed the coherence and significance of such texts. I3 From now on, man writes the text of history himself. This leads the historian to a similar paradox as today when confronted with poststructuralist theories on textuality: History must first be written in order to be known. A major difference is yet to be listed: According to Dilthey, human life has the structure of meaning of a text, so that writing history nleans less of a purely linguistic construction and more of a spelling-out of anthropological preconditions. The above discourse has given us a first impression on the metaphoric textualisation of History in the German 'Historical School', which is set in the period from Herder to Dilthey. The development of a topos, of course, does not have much evidential value since it merely reflects the process in question but does not necessarily influence it. I must go back a long way in the realms of historical theory and also be more explicit in order to make my theory more plausible that the modem concept of history has developed in the course of a specific textualisation of human orientation between past, present and future.
II. Narrativism and the Origin of 'The One History' in the 18th Century Knowledge of the past was not and is not necessarily referred to the framework fanliliar to us as History. Neither is knowledge of the past always and everywhere referred to this framework. This particular category, History, requires a certain form of historical knowledge, a certain form of texts that reconstruct the past. Since about thirty years, scholars such as Hayden White, 12 DROYSEN (1977 [1857], p. 30). 13 Cf. DILTHEY (1927, pp. 290-91).
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LITERARY CRITICISM AND HISTORICAL SCIENCE Louis Mink, Paul Ricreur and Jorn RUsen have worked out that we have to view this particular form in narratives. In Analytical Philosophy, narrativity was first examined and identified "as a kind of explanation especially appropriate to the explanation of historical, as against natural, events and processes" .14 Fundamental to this explanation is the understandable logical consistency of narratives; 15 in addition to that we have their synthesizing function. The modality of the narration makes it possible to create a specific organization and arrangement of the past and its genetic linkage to the present. In retrospective, past happenings can gain the logic of a coherent and straight history. To tell a history would thus imply following a definite fable and a particular narrative pattern which in tum build the 'depth structure' of this history. With· the help of this deep structure, the narrative conducts its own interpretation, i.e. the allocation of a certain significance not contained in its factual elements. 16 To this point, the narrative dominates historical writings as put down in a literal sense by the historian. In Hans-Michael Baumgartner's transcendental philosophy of history, the "basic feature of the narrative" is further identified as an "a priori scheme" on which all reconstructions of history "are based as a condition of possibilities" .17 In general, narrativism does not work on historical differentiation. The narrative is held to be an anthropological universal and hence a major form of any historical thought. The problem of ahistoricity becomes quite clear in the case of Ricreur when he, along the lines of Augustinus, formulates the problem of 'dissonance' in the human conception of time and finds the 'answer' to this problem in the 'consonant' story long existing as a myth in Aristotelian poetics. i8 But this view neglects one important point: the insight gained by such different thinkers as Reinhart Koselleck and Michel Foucault that History, understood as a universal and integrating relation of events and processes having an irreversible development, is a concept that first took shape not before the mid-18 th century. Of all the things, this narrativism seems to relieve the history of its historicity. Let us take a look at the result before proceeding to the main argument. The theoretical narrativity of history is well able to stand the test which is 14 WHITE (1984, p. 7). 15 Cf. DANTO (1965, pp. 233-56). 16 Cf. WHITE (1984, pp. 20-5). 17 BAUMGARTNER (1976, p. 279). 18 RICffiUR (1983-85, vol. 1, pp. 19-136).
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DANIEL FULDA signified by the historicity of the term history, and in such a way that the textuality of the modem term of history becomes all the more clearer. Firstly: Given that the concept of the one History were only to be valid in a historically limited period, the more fundamental,anthropologically based connection of narrative and knowledge of the past, as in the works of Ricreur, RUsen and David Carr among others, is by no means totally dissolved. Narratives and memories of past events can be found in the earliest texts of western civilisation. Carr, in addition, has reason enough to describe that the narrative is that particular implement with the help of which people everywhere have always assured a meaningful coherence of their lives by giving the events in which they have been involved a pragmatic context. 19 These particular stories must of course be clearly distinguished from the narrative organization of aU events which we know as History. To understand the past as presented in historie~, be it the individual past of one's own life, or be it in the larger sense the past of certain peoples, does by no means imply that the entire past in its relation with the present forms solely one unique History. One single grammatical detail, namely the number of the term 'history', indicates the crucial difference. Although there may be innumerable histories with which people have always conceived their past, on the other hand, the history which covers the civilisations of the ancient world as well as the Chinese Middle Ages and the American Civil War always exclusively exists in the singular. This one single History integrates all the particular histories and hence, using Reinhart Koselleck's accurate expression, can appropriately be termed as a 'collective singular'.20 As shown by Koselleck in a detailed study on historical semantics, the appearance of the collective singular in the German-speaking countries exactly coincides with the perception of this History as a total continuum of events and processes. 21 Firstly, the term Geschichte referred simply to the object of historical research, and from around 1780 onwards, also to the totality of historical knowledge, which up to then was denoted in German by the Latin word Historia which in tum could always be used with the implication of a 'collective singular'.22 In the respective languages of the leading nations in 19 Cf. CARR (1986, pp. 45-72, ch. 2). In support of this theory fronl a psychological viewpoint, cf. STRAUB (1998). 20 Cf. KOSELLECK (1992, pp. 38-66). 21 Cf. KOSELLECK (1975, pp. 647-53). 22 Cf. Ibid., pp. 653-8.
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LITERARY CRITICISM AND HISTORICAL SCIENCE historiography, Britain and France, the intellectual tum during the 18th century cannot be established at a similar semantic level as in German. Reason being that in English and French there exists no competition, as seen in German between the borrowed teml from Latin, Historia. and a word of Germanic origin, Geschichte, for these two countries have both maintained that similar word of Latin origin, viz. history and histoire. Nevertheless the idea of the past seen as being a total continuum that leads to the present gained ground in the field of historical thought in Western Europe, too. 23 The basic way in which history is supposed to be seen as a text is elucidated by the fact that the new, complex concept ofl-Iistory that emerged in the 18th century owes its existence to a "fusion of poetics and history".24 Koselleek makes this clear on the basis of German and French source material. Whereas literary composition increasingly stood up to the requirements of historical plausibility, history, to speak in Aristotelian terms, orientated itself towards the more general truth of literature, Le. towards its inner plausibHity.25 The logical consistency and sufficiency of actions, always a remarkable feature of the poetical mythos, became a requirement of historiography as well, and thereafter was passed on to the object of historiography, the connection of events in History.26 Ever since, history has been seen as a text. Or to put it precisely, only by understanding the entirety of the past in an emphatic sense, namely in the sense of a literary composition as a text, it is constituted as History.
III. The Contribution of Art to the Shaping of History as Knowledge After passing through the theory of history, or to be more precise, the narrative theory of history, we tum to the history of the concept of 'History' (Begriffsgeschichte). It cannot be taken for granted that along with the new term we also had the capability to represent its content textually, i.e., in the true
23 Cf. SCHULIN (1994, pp. 337-8). 24 KOSELLECK (1975, p. 661). 25 Cf Ibid., p. 660. 26 Cf Ibid., p. 663.
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DANIEL FULDA sense of the word 'History'. The concept of 'History' as yet did not create a sufficient condition for the writing of history which was capable of expressing its conceptual implications (continuity, totality, orientation). What this term demanded but did not provide for was the principal possibility as well as the concrete modi not just to think but also to write 'History'. In the middle of the 18th century, the status of historiography lacks uniformity in the leading European nations. The historians in Britain and France were way ahead of the German development. Worth mentioning among others are, on the French side, Voltaire's and Turgot's philosophies of a coherent history of Ancient China right up to their own period, and Hume's and ~obertson' s narrative histories on nations and epochs on the British side. Compared to their West-European counterparts, German historians were far less in a position to write history in a way as to appropriately suit the new, 'modem' concept of historical thought. 27 Historians belonging to the Enlightenment in Western Europe had lesser difficulties in representing history as a narrative text for they had the necessary linguistic patterns along with the required literary competency. Conversely, German historians from that period used to work in a lesser developed framework within the national literary scene. This refers to the stylistic repertoire as well as the book market and the views of the public. In spite of that, German historiography at the beginning of the 19th century first acquired a scientific status that required some distancing from foreign purposes of historiography, both philosophical and of a rhetorical-moral nature, and as well required the public organization of research facilities mainly at universities. 28 The above mentioned backlog had been transformed in only a few decades to a head start. This requires further explanation: Which made historiographical methods this exceptional rise possible? In my opinion, this leap ahead was due to, at first a delayed, but for that an even more thorough acquisition of the concept of history as text. Among German historians, the modern concept of history as being in itself a differing continuum was first proposed in the Gottingen school. A highly ambitious attempt to orientate the writing of history along these lines was undertaken in 1772 by August Ludwig Schlozer in his work Vorstellung seiner Universalhistorie (Presentation of His Universal History). Schlozer introduced a con27 Cf.
(1986); GOTTLOB (1989); BLANKE/FLEISCHER (1990); (1991, pp. 111-88); FULDA (pp. 49-58); SOBMANN (2000, pp. 33-66). 28 Cf. SIMON (1996, pp. 127-30). BODEKER ET AL.
BLANKE
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ceptual pair in the theory of history which attempts to grasp the new concept of history in a theoretical manner: the contrary of aggregates and systems. The historical aggregate merely consists of Geschichten (histories/stories); only the system, in contrast, is in a position to give "a living idea of the whole" (rteine lebendige Vorstellung des Ganzen"). Schlozer's ideas are aimed at a universal history; the whole entity means to him "the world", Le., "humanity" ("das menschliche Geschlechttt ).29 This expectation inevitably lead to an excessive overtaxing since Schlozer was pushing towards a system which would explain the unity of history. Thus, a structural model, which could neither be sufficiently verbalised nor be symbolically represented, was drawn up. The historians of the Enlightenment period, on the other hand, rejected the narrative as an implicitly explanatory process. Schlozer and Gatterer raised the concept of not narrating but rather creating a closed system of cause and effect to a historiographical ideal, because they were oriented towards the mechanical ideals of rationalistic philosophy30. Schlozer finds literary composition and historical writings to be antithetically opposing one another. A "novelist" ("Romanschreiber") meant to him someone who extracts the efforts of scholarly work. Accordingly, a "creative genius" ("schopjerisches Genie") was truly someone "who creates his stuff out of nothing". From an epistemological point of view, Schlozer believed objectivity to be possible and thus based his assumption that "the historian creates nothing" ("der Historiker hingegen erschaffet nichts,,).31 A literary composition in his opinion was, therefore, neither a substantial model nor a medium of reflection of historiographical text production. Nevertheless, only within a few years' time, the Gottingen historians came to a dead-end. It was not possible to realize a single one of their numerous concepts of universal history.32 A way out of this dead-end was shown by that particular concept which had before been refuted viz. 'history as (a literary analogical) text'. But now, this was applied to a totally different concept of 29 SCHL0ZER (1990 [1772/73], p. 18), also reprinted in: HORST WALTER BLANKE, DIRK FLEISCHER (1990, vol. 2, p. 670). 30 Cf. GATTERER (1767a, p. 80); FULDA (1996, pp. 59-76). 31 SCHL0ZER (1990 [1772/73], vol. 2, p. 245); cf. GATTERER (1767b, p. 20). 32 cr. REILL (1975, pp. 46, 101); FULDA (1996, pp. 200-208). As shown by Frank R. Ankersmit in his Gibbon-analysis, the substantialist representation-model in Western European historiography also faced a similar crisis; cf. ANKERSMIT (1995).
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history. It was no more the particular history narrated about a definite period in the past, but rather the newly-gained History as a whole. The text, the only mode in which we are able to conduct historical thought, thus gained the function of a transcendental pattern. This phenomenon is first observed in the case of Herder whom we saw transfer the book metaphor to history. Through more or less direct debates with the Gottingen historians he composed history and historiography according to the structure of a literary text. According to Herder, the structure of these texts always forms a presupposed pattern which adequately enables the historian to connect the disparate particles of historical events. Thus, in a way, we could satisfy the demands of a scientific discipline to maintain a coherence that easily corresponds to human intellectual and linguistic capabilities. In this manner, Herder sets free the microstructural sequence of the cause and effect principle from its mechanistic chains. At the same time, the dramatic plot advances to that macrostructure in which, as Droysen maintains, affairs (Geschiifte) become history.33 To view history as a text is, in these cases, anthropologically founded: As man learns about the world through language, say through texts, any sort of integrating concept of knowledge like, for instance, History must follow textual stnlctures constructed by language itself. These structures are found to be most concise especially in poetry. What Herder acquires from literature is consequently no more a facultative supplement of historiography that possibly intensifies its effects on the reader, but in fact constitutes its object. 34 The text, structured according to a literary pattern, is the appropriate presentation of 'History' as perceived by historicism since it conveys meaning by both, the whole as well as by the individual components, on a symbolical-microcosmic level "in which an independent whole appears in each detail" ("wo in jeder Einzelnheit schon so ein Ganzes erscheint").35 It can a11iculate the intrinsic value of peoples and epochs as well as the inseparability of the entire history (which is, of course, never complete). Two epistemological obstacles of the Enlightenment history have thus been taken care of: Firstly, the illustrative quality of historical writing to the past is substituted by historiographical 'fiction'. We must note here 33 Cf DROYSEN (1977 [1857], p. 69). 34 Cf. SEEBA (1985); KNODT (1990); FULDA (1996, pp. 183-227). 35 HERDER: Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit [1774; This, too, a Philosophy of History], in: HERDER (1994, pp. 9-107, see p. 105).
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LITERARY CRITICISM AND HISTORICAL SCIENCE that fiction does not mean inventing stuff but rather perceiving and constructing the narrative. Secondly, the obligation of confomlity to the system of the Enlightenment history is resolved, the reason being that Herder conceives historical insight oriented towards the 'liberal' model of understanding a literary text which uses all faculties of the mind and soul. Herder had the inclination to unite source research, rational knowledge and aesthetic constructions and so there emerged a threat of forgetting the 'epistemological cut' between historiography and literary composition. A clear evidence for that is Herder's enthusiasm for the famous 'historian' called Shakespeare. 36 This overemphasis of literary genius was rectified by the reflections on autonomy and interdependence between art and knowledge during the period of the Weimar Klassik. It was mainly Schiller who made important contributions towards the development of a narrative historiographical tradition in Germany. 37 This was supported by the historical constructivism of Kant's philosophy of ethics and law, the poetics and the hermeneutic literary history of Friedrich Schlegel, and the poetical hermeneutics of Wilhelm von Humboldt. 38 In addition, Goethe the poet and the authority on aesthetics, had a major influence when Leopold von Ranke, the founder of history as a discipline in the historistic sense, included these aspects. We can follow up in detail the course of developments in Ranke's aesthetic and historical studies at school and later as an academic student. 39 Common to the earlier-mentioned authors is the fact that they proposed convincing reasons to comprehend history as a literary text and to exercise aesthetic thinking in its study. Following this development, historiography adapted these processes of the newly-formed German literature which had gained extraordinary cultural influence. The 'autonomy' which was granted to literature in the same period should not conceal the importance of this transfer. Characteristic for the autonomous literature of the period of Goethe is the fact that it raised the demands of value and also promised to have an integrating character reaching without its very own sphere and being incorporated into historiography which was largely dependent on the integration of happenings and events. In the moulding work of historicism, Ranke's Romische Piipste (History of the 36 HERDER: "Shakespeare" [1773], in: HERDER (1993, pp. 498-521, see p. 515). 37 Cf. PRUFER (2000). 38 Cf. SAUL (1984); GOTTLOB (1989); IGGERS/POWELL (1990); PROFER (1996), LAU (1999, pp. 147-244,318-389). 39 Cf FULDA (1996, pp. 296-343).
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DANIEL FULDA Popes) from 1834-1836, we can appreciate, at all possible levels, thought processes and presentation techniques as shaped in the literature of the Goethe period, some of them being e.g. the conversion of historical events into a story form - with a clear tendency to plots similar to those in the Bildungsroman - the assigning of ideal tasks to important figures along with the withdrawal of the authorial narrator, the immanent narrative explanation of historical processes, the symbolic concentration of the whole story in deciding situations, as well as incorporating seemingly trivial but nevertheless significant and/or vivid details. 40 Some complementary philological methods by virtue of their intuititive aspects (contemplation, sensitivity, fantasyanalogous divination) go back to the field of aesthetics. 41 In addition, aesthetics was the carrier of the idealism of the material theory of history, the historistic assumption of an ideational nucleus in phenomenal events. Ranke has confessed this quite openly when asking Goethe for assistance: If I now understand singular entities and recognize by this virtue the living being of the whole: 0 if only life were so clear to grasp as life itself has been, if only your spirit would grace me, 0 you septuagenarian, so that on the steadfast ground of history, the true ideal would emerge: may knowledge unknown emerge from those known forms! That blood may tum to gold!42 At that point, the theory of historiography was conspicuously underdeveloped. In general, historiographic practice was at the fore. To make it possible was the true merit of the so-called Ideenlehre (theory of ideas) since it provided general explanatory terms which assisted in the classification and interconnecting of events and happenings reported in detai1. 43 To sum up, let us point out that 'History' is older than historicism, but only after its adaptation
40 Cf. METZ (1979); HARTH (1980); FULDA (1996, pp. 374-90); HARDTWIG (1997). 41 Cf. HARTH (1996, e. 861). 42 RANKE (1964-75 [1817], vol. 1, p. 174): "Wenn ieh nun das Einzelne fasse und verstehe, und es kommt mir aus dem Leben desselben das Leben des Ganzen zu Gedanken und Gemiite: 0 daB die Entwiekelung dieses Lebens so klar wiirde, wie es selbst gewesen ist, daB mieh Dein Geist besuehte, Siebzigjahriger, daB sieh auf dem festen Boden des Historisehen das Ideale wahrhaft erhiibe: aus den Gestalten, die da gegeben sind, was nieht gegeben ist, herausspringe! DaB uns Blut zu Gold werde!" 43 Cf. ROSEN (I993a, p. 56).
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LITERARY CRITICISM AND HISTORICAL SCIENCE of aesthetic procedures did the modern, poetically-constructed term of history get its historiographic realisation; one could almost say: its fulfilment. As far as certain aspects of this field are concerned, scholars have been well aware of this over a long time. Metonymically speaking, Friedrich Meinecke was of the opinion that "for Ranke to be possible, Goethe simply had to be the predecessor".44 The study of the history of ideas however appreciated only the material historical theory of historicism as influenced by the Kunstperiode of German literature. That mainly meant "the consciousness of individuality, of the inner forces, of their characteristic individual development, and of the common fundament that connected everything together" .45 This aspect is of some importance - especially when it is in connection with the explanation of certain cognitive and socio-theoretical restrictions of historistic thought4 6 -, but it 'only' deals with the characteristic highlights embedded in an assumed 'History', not its discoursive emergence: its principal 'writing' which has to precede all kinds of special writing. Similarly, the function of literary-aesthetical procedures will be reduced if only their influence on the 'representational forms' is given any significance. Contrarily, Ulrich Muhlack ascertains that: It is essential that the follow-up [-relation of historistic historiography to the literature of the Goethe period, D.F.] does not amount to external relations, for example in the adoption of certain literary techniques. Historiographers instead actually gain the categorial framework from literature in which they fix their newly-gained understanding of historical research. 47 Analogous to the poesies of literature, 'research' was no longer considered a purifier of written records but was instead practised and understood as the producer of new knowledge. 48 The aesthetisization of history indeed affected the entire process of research, i.e., conception, cognition, structuralisation,
explanation and interpretation of the historical process which had to be recognized as well as the historical narrative which has to be composed. Aesthetic processes gained a transcendental function in historicism for they 44 MEINECKE (1965, p. 601) (Leopold v. Ranke, Gedachtnisrede [Memorial speech, 1936]). 45 Ibid. 46 cr. IGGERS 1968. 47 MUHLACK (1997, p. 69). 48 Cf. Ibid., pp. 70-1.
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DANIEL FULDA possessed consequences in regard to the WeltbUd, the material historical theories, cognition, hermeneutics and discourse. The aesthetisization of the Goethe period encompassed all 'factors' of the disciplinary matrix of history (according to Jom Rusen's model)49, although this assumption has not been explored in detail: This ranges right from the fundamental aesthetic concept of education (Bildung) as an expected function of historical knowledge through to the seemingly stringent field of positivistic source interpretation. The outlined aesthetisization should, in addition, have considerably facilitated the interaction of the said factors, firstly, because the aesthetic thinking of the Goethe period was generally orientated towards the entirety of things; secondly, because this aesthetisization constantly points out the historiographical aim to the historian. The internal networking and systematization of historical research counts as a definitive indicator for making it into a scientific discipline. 50 To conceive history in analogy to a literary text would accordingly not only have modernized the forms of writing history, and would not only have supported the idea of one complete history, but it would, in addition, have given a tremendous impetus to the uniformity of history as a university discipline. The conversion of history into a university discipline which prevented an aesthetisization in the German Enlightenment history would have been achieved with the help of the aesthetisization in historicism. Subsequently, the more history understood itself to be scientific in nature, the more it was bent to suppress its aesthetic-poetical dependency. Even Droysen, himself a theoretician and considered an exception among his contemporaries, could not get away from these aesthetics. The initial concept of his Historik [Principles of History], which by itself is not quite specifically aesthetic but rather anthropological, and its linguistic instruments did not have such an obvious effect but were inevitable as aesthetisizing factors. Droysen's definition of the historical process as 'education' (Bildung)51 continues an anthropological programme which Schiller had combined with an 49
ROSEN (1993a, p. 32) names the five factors of this matrix as follows: the need for orientation inherent to the present, leading views on the human past, rules of empirical study, fonns of historiographical presentation, and functions of historical knowledge. For an English version cf ROSEN: "What is Theory in History?", in: ROSEN (1993b, pp. 15-48, esp. pp. 19-22). 50 Cf. Ibid., pp. 36, 44. 51 Cf DROYSEN (1977 [1857], pp. 14,309).
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LITERARY CRITICISM AND HISTORICAL SCIENCE 'aesthetic education' through art. In addition, the historical method operates aesthetically when it seeks the spirit of the materialised expression found in the source and when it deals with the historical phenomena as well as their ideational fundamentals. 52 Even the material theory of the history of "moral similarities" (sittliche Gemeinsamkeiten) is based on aesthetics. Droysen has developed this theory on the basis of language, to be more precise, on the basis of the two-fold character of language, viz., the material and the nonmaterial character. 53 Language is deliberately implelnented in that region of the system which the German Klassik originally reserved for art. Droysen says that an 'aesthetic' structure is an inherent attribute of language since this medium represents its non-material or 'spiritual content' by means of a perceivable 'material' expression. Therefore, the linguistic-philosophical concept alone does not explain the existence of the fundamental aestheticity of Droysen's Historik but simultaneously also its suppression. The connection of material historical theory and philosophy with anthropology, epistemology and methodology in the case of the earlier-mentioned authors ought to make it clear that a textualised viewing of the history of historical thought does not just give an insight into what is often called the 'representational side' of the research of history. (Theoretically this is rather problematic since it is quite reduced.) We have instead examined how the concept of History, which continues to influence our historical thinking too, first came into existence. Accordingly, it had nothing to do with an epiphenomenon but the basis, the central concept of historical thought. Looking at things from an epistemological point of view, history and historiography of the period from approximately 1760 to 1860 verify that German historicism conceives 'History' itself as a text which should be read and interpreted according to literary patterns. The fundamentality of this process corresponds to the range of the results: Without this kind of textualisation, historical thinking in Germany would hardly have acquired the prestige and influence in the middle of the 19th century by which it made an impact on the bourgeois culture (biirgerliche Kultur) and replaced literature as a central medium of influence. 54 Translated from the German by Shahnoor Sheryari 52 Cf Ibid., pp. 233-4. Cf. FULDA (1996, pp. 418-43). 53 Cf. DROYSEN (1977 [1857], p. 26). 54 Cf. HARDTWIG (1997).
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Methodologie. Dargestellt an Ranke, Treitschke und Lamprecht. Mit einem Anhang iiber zeitgenossische Geschichtstheorie, [Basics of Historiographical Thought. History of the Humanities as Methodology. Based on Examples from the Works of Ranke, Treitschke and Lamprecht. With a Supplement on Contemporary Historical Theories] Miinchen (Fink) 1979 (= Miinchner Universitats-Schriften. Reihe der Philosophischen Fakulitat, vol. 21). MUHLACK, U.: "Geschichtsschreibung als Geschichtswissenschaft," [Historiography as Historical Disciplin] in: WOLFGANG KOTTLER, JORN ROSEN, ERNST SCHULIN (Eds.): Geschichtsdiskurs in 5 Biinden [The Discourse on History - Five Volumes], vol. 3: Die Epoche der Historisierung [The Age of the Rise of History], Frankfurt a.M. (Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag) 1997 (= Fischer Wissenschaft, vol. 11477), pp. 67-79. PROFER, T.: "Wilhelm von Humboldts 'rhetorische Hermeneutik'. Historische Sinnbildung im Spannungsfeld von Empirie, Philosophie und Poesie," [Wilhelm von Humboldt's 'Rhetorical Henneneutics'. The Construction of Historical Meaning in the Conflict of Empirism, Philosophy and Poetics], in: DANIEL FULDA, THOMAS PROFER (Eds.): Faktenglaube undfiktionales Wissen. Zum Verhiiltnis von Wissenschaft und Kunst in der Moderne [Fictional Knowledge and the Belief in Facts. On the Relation between Art and Knowledge in the Modem Age], Frankfurt a.M. (Lang) 1996 (= Kinner Studien zur Literaturwissenschaft, vol. 9), pp. 127-66. PROFER, T.: Die Identitiit der Geschichte. Friedrich Schiller, der Historiker, und die Anfiinge der modernen Geschichtswissenschaft [The Identity of History. Friedrich Schiller, the Historian, and the Rise of Modem History], Phil. Diss. Univ. of Cologne 2000. RANKE, L.v.: Aus Werk und Nachlaj3 [From his Published and Unpublished Works], ed. by Walther Peter Fuchs and Theodor Schieder, vol. 1-4, Miinchen/Wien (Oldenbourg) 1964-75. RANKE, L.v.: Siimmtliche Werke [Complete Works], vol. 1-54, Leipzig (Duncker & Humblot) 1867-1890. 56 56 As a selection in English cf. RANKE, L.v.: The Theory and Practice of History, ed. with an Introd. by Georg G. Iggers and Konrad von MoJtke. New transl. by
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DANIEL FULDA RANKE, L.: Dieromischen Ptipste, ihre Kirche und ihr Staat im sechszehnten und siebzehnten lahrhundert, vol. 1-3, Berlin (Duncker & Humblot) 1834-36 (= Flirsten und Volker von Slid-Europa im sechszehnten und siebzehnten Jahrhundert [Princes and Peoples of Southern Europe in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries], Vol. 2-4). English edition: History of the· Popes; Their Church and State, transl. by E. Fowler, vol. 1-3, New York/London [1901] (= World's Greatest Literature); New York (Ungar) [1966]. REILL, P.H.: The German Enlightenment and the Rise of Historicism, Berkeley/Los Angeles/London (Univ. of Califomia Pr.) 1975. RICffiUR, P.: Temps et recit, Vol. 1-3, Paris (Ed. du Seuil) 1983-85. English edition: Time and Narrative, vol. 1-3, transl. by Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer, Chicago (Univ. of Chicago Pr.) 1984-88. ROSEN, J. (1993a): Konfigurationen des Historismus. Studien zur deutschen Wissenschaftskultur [Configurations of Historicism. Studies in the Humanities in Germany], Frankfurt am Main (Suhrkamp) 1993 (= suhrkamp taschenbuch wissenschaft, vol. 1082). ROSEN, J. (1993b):· Studies in Metahistory, ed. and introd. by Pieter Duvenage, Pretoria (Human Sciences Research Council) 1993. SAUL, N.: History and Poetry in Novalis and in the Tradition ofthe German Enlightenment, London (Institute of Germanic Studies, University of London) 1984 (= Bithell Studies of Dissertations, vol. 8). SCHLOZER, A.L.: Vorstellung seiner Universalhistorie (1772/73) Mit Beilagen [Presentation of his Universal History. With Appendices], ed. by Horst Walter Blanke, Hagen (Rottmann) 1990 (= Beitrage zur Geschichtskultur, vol. 4). SCHULIN, E.: "Der Zeitbegriff der AufkUirung und des deutschen Historismus," [The Conception of Time during the Enlightenment and German Historicism], in: WOLFGANG KOTTLER, JORN ROSEN, ERNST SCHULIN (Eds.): Geschichtsdiskurs in 5 Btinden [The Discourse on History - Five Volumes], vol. 2: An/tinge modernen historischen Denkens [The Rise of Modem Historical Thought], Frankfurt am Main (Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag) 1994 (Fischer Wissenschaft. 11476), pp. 333-43. SEEBA, H.C.: "Geschichte als Dichtung. Herders Beitrag zur .Asthetisierung der Geschichtsschreibung," [History as Poetry. Herder's Contributions towards the Aesthetization of History] in: Storia della Storiografia, 8 (1985), pp. 50-73. SIMON, C.: Historiographie. Eine Einfuhrung [An Introduction to Historiography], Stuttgart (U"lmer) 1996 (= UTB. 190 I). Wilma A. Iggers and K.v.M., Indianapolis/New York (Bobbs-Merrill) 1973, or RANKE, L. V.: The Secret of World History. Selected Writings on the Art and Science of History, ed. with transl. by Roger Wines, New York (Fordham UP) 1981.
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LITERARY CRITICISM AND HISTORICAL SCIENCE STRAUB, J. (Ed.): Erinnerung, Geschichte, Identitat [Memory, History and Identity], vol. 1: Erzahlung, Identitat und historisches Bewuf3tsein. Die psychologische Konstruktion von Zeit und Geschichte [The Narrative, Identity and Historical Consciousness. The Psychological Reconstruction of Time and History], Frankfurt a.M. (Suhrkamp) 1998 (= suhrkamp taschenbuch .wissenschaft, vol. 1402). SUBMANN, J.: Geschichtsschreibung oder Roman? Zur Konstitutionslogik von Geschichtserzahlungen zwischen Schiller und Ranke (1780-1824) [Historiography or Novel? About the Formative Logic of Historical Narratives between Schiller and Ranke], Stuttgart (Steiner) 2000 (= Frankfurter historische Abhandlungen, vol. 41 ). VEESER, H. A. (Ed.): The New Historicism, London/New York (Routledge) 1989. YOM HOFE, G.: "Die Geschichte als 'Epopee Gottes'. Zu Herders asthetischer Geschichtstheorie," [History as an 'Epopee of God'. Writings on Herder's Aesthetical Theory of History] in: BRIGITTE POSCHMANN (Ed.): Buckeburger Gesprache uber Johann Gottfried Herder 1983, Rinteln (Bosendahl) 1984 (= Schaumburger Studien, vol. 45), pp. 56-81. WHITE, H.: "'Figuring the nature of the times deceased': Literary Theory and Historical Writing," in: RALPH COHEN (Ed.): The Future of Literary Theory, New York! London (Routledge) 1989; pp. 19-43, 411-14. WHITE, H.: "The Question of Narrative in Contemporary Historical Theory," in: History and Theory, 23 (1984), pp. 1-33. WHITE, H.: Metahistory. The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth Century Europe, Baltimore/London (The John Hopkins Univ. Pr.) 1973. ZAGORIN, P.: "History, the Referent, and Narrative: Reflections on Postmodernism Now," in: History and Theory, 38 (1999), pp. 1-24.
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Chapter 8
Social and Philosophical Theory in the 19th Century German Thought MARIO SIGNORE
I.
From the Gnoseological and Scientistic Limit to the Horizon of the Dilthey-Windelband-Rickert The "Meaning Constitution" from Weber~s Subjectively Intentioned Sense to Schutz's Intersubjectivity The Analysis of Social Action in the Horizon of a Double Necessity and the Henneneutic Opening "Significance~~.
II. III.
In his preface to Die Entstehung des Historismus, written in 1936, Friedrich Meinecke, among other things, maintains that "the rise of the historicism has been... one of the main spiritual revolutions that the Western thought has ever produced". 1 Half a century after that assertion, which in that period could seem partial, if we want to strike the balance of the level of the conceptual elaboration and of its influence on Western European culture, we cannot but confirm Meinecke's conviction. Moreover, if we want to perceive, without any prejudice or cultural provincialisms the significant influence that the "historicisms" had on the development of the social-historical science, we should go further the above-cited quotation, in order to go through the most significant moments of a debate which had and still has, as landmark, the route which leads from Dilthey to Weber, going through Simmel and Rickert.
Die Entstehung des Historismus (The Coming into Being of Munchen (Oldenbourg Verlag) 1959~ Vorwort~ p. 1. Italian translation: Le origini dello storicismo~ Firenze (Sansoni) 1967~ p. IX.
F.
MEINECKE:
Historicism)~ in: "Werke"~ III~
SOCIAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL THEORY IN THE 19TH CENTURY This route led, on one hand, to the formulation of a concept of history which was able to use in a constructive and productive way the contribution of the social science and the sociological analysis, and, on the other, to a deep consideration of the social science which has taken it gradually out of the positivistic and Marxist spheres, by opening them to a positive confrontation with contemporary philosophy, according to which phenomenology and hermenutics have the main responsibility on the theoretic turn of such a science.
I. From the Gnoseological and Scientistic Limit to the Horizon of the "Significance". Dilthey-Windelband-Rickert In this conscious research of the theoretical origins, of course we need to emphasize the role of W. Dilthey's reflection because, among the other things, he was able to start that process of corrosion of the absolute historicism, that in Germany had the most definitive and total expression in the Hegelian system and paved the way to the autonomous development of the historic science, which positively influenced the social science, as well. Even though the debt of contemporary sociology to W. Dilthey has to be totally defined, it does not seenl groundless that just his attention to the human world, the changes which favoured the inner experience, the opening, as risky as courageous to the Erlebnisse (experiencing), have put to the social science those questions, that have forced them to revise the old epistemological statutes, in order to reconstruct new ones, maybe less reassuring but also more efficacious in order to get a better understanding of the social behaviour in a concrete-historical situation. In this direction, J. Habermas seems to have hit the mark, because he has found in Dilthey's thought the essential care to let emerge in the social science the urgency of self consideration, that has been completely naturalized by the positivism and to build a sociological theory of life, as the analysis of the human interaction, in order to integrate and correct Marx's positions. We should not neglect to notice that "Dilthey takes from the philosophy of reflection the basic model of Erleben (experiencing) as the methodological connection, that is expression and comprehension instead of an ingenuous theory of the sympathetic penetration: the spirit has a life of its own because it alienates into objectivations and, in the same time, comes back to thinking
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MARIO SIGNORE itself over its vital manifestations. The history of the human race is linked to this process of the spirit's making. For this reason the everyday experience of the socialized feHows moves in the direction of Erleben with expression and comprehension, which represent also the way the science of the spirit proceeds".2 If we place ourselves in the right historical perspective, it is not difficult to notice Dilthey's broadmindedness, because he wants to support the spiritual side of the human world and, consequently the spiritual meaning of the human actions. When humans act in society, in fact, they set their thoughts and values, their tensions, intentions and passions in motion before moving as bodies; that means also contemporaneously with their bodies, the object that interacts with its own environment and the other bodies. All this has become essential for the redefinition of the bounds of social science research and paved the way to a new science which risked to flatten out on the scheme of the classical theories about knowledge and science. And that's not all. This let sociology open inexhaustible spaces to the human "praxis", by forcing it to confront with the human question about "to be", that takes men to look for those trends that determine the construction of the human world without appealing to metaphysical or theological visions of history. We need all this information in order to recognize the inner limits of the social science and, as we will see later, the necessity to open a multidisciplinary perspective, which can take it out of a proud and self-sufficient isolation where they were shut in, just some decades ago. In spite of the limits we have to acknowledge that thanks to Dilthey the social-historical science has conquered a new dimension of the universal which does not consist in an objectivity established beforehand of the exact science but, on the contrary, takes place in the permanent relation with the social reality and the history of the community, a history which does not disregard any moment of its experience, whether it is made up from reflection or praxis. 3
2
13
J. HABERMAS: Erkenntnis und Interesse~ Frankfurt a.M. (Suhrkamp Verlag) 1968. Italian translation: Conoscenza e Interesse~ Bari (Laterza) 1973~ p. 149. Cf. also W. DILTHEY: Gesammelte Schriften, VII Leipzig/Berlin 1927, pp. 86ff. Italian translation: Critica della ragione storica, Torino (Einaudi) 1954~ pp. 154-55. It would be very interesting to confront H. JOACH: Haldelnder Mensch und objectivr Geist. Zur Theorie der Geist-und Sozialwisssenschaften bei Wi/hem
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SOCIAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL Tl-IEORY IN THE 19TH CENTURY Once the gnoseological and scientistic limit, which tried to reduce the epistemological statute of the social science, has been exceeded, and the horizon of the "significance" has been opened, the thematic approach to the value became inevitable, an approach that was the basis of the distinction between natural science and the sciences of the mind, even inside the Methodenstreit, which had involved nearly all the German thinkers, philosophers in particular in the last years of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20 th one. By considering the "value" as the differentiating criterion, Dilthey's distinction between Natur- and Geisteswissenschaflen undergoes a change and looks for a new characterization, because it cannot support the contrast between nature and spirit, any more. According to this statement, for example, W. Wildelband, since his speech for the Rectorship at Strasburg University in 1894, entitled Geschichte und Naturwissenschaft (History and Natural Science), rejects the antithesis in which Dilthey is involved, about nature and spirit, by saying that "it is an objective antithesis which gets a dominant position at the end of the classical thought and at the beginning of the medieval one and that has been rigorously kept until the recent metaphysics from Descartes to Spinoza, until Schelling and Hegel". 4 All the empirical disciplines, according to Wildelband share the purpose of looking for the laws of becoming, "whether it is a movement of bodies, a transformation of elements, the development of the organic life, or a process of representation, feeling or will". 5 The empirical science will not be separated and distinguished according to their object, any more: very different objects will be included in the same context of the empirical science. The only distinction possible is the methodological one, whose principle of division is characterized from the formal aspects of their cognitive aims: the natural science aims at the research of general laws, while the spiritual
4
5
Dilthey, Meisenheim a G. 1974. For a more recent discussion about Dilthey's themes, it would be useful to consult F. BIANCO, F. ANGELI: Diltheye il pensiero del novecento, Milano 1985, where there are some more contributions by Italian specialists (F. Bianco, G. Calabro, F. Tessitore, M. Pemiola, G. Marini, A. Izzo, A. Marini), and the significant apports by H.-G. Gadamer, M. W. Orth, O. Poggeler, H. Boeder, G. Schmidt. W. WILDELBAND: Geschichte und Naturwissenschaft, in: ~~Praludien", II, Tiibigen (Mohr) 1924, p. 142. Ope cit., pp. 143f.
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science aims at the research of historical facts. 6 After having ascertained that the empirical science aims at the knowledge of reality, it is possible to make a distinction about the "way" reality is perceived: either in the form of the general and natural law, or in the form, determined by history, of the singular fact; according to this distinction the former is a science of law, while the latter is the science of the events. So, whether the former indicates what is normal and regular in reality, the latter indicates what has happened and goes on happening in an unrepeatable way, because it is unique. "The scientific thought - if it is possible to elaborate a new term - is in the first case nomothetic and in the second one ideographic. If we want to follow the usual expressions, we can talk about an antithesis between the natural and the historical discipline, considering that in the methodological sense, psychology has to be included in the sphere of the natural sciences". 7 The distinction between natural research and history, therefore, begins and is justified only when we use facts with a cognitive ainl: only the aim of the research can make a distinction of the facts. We should not omit the risk to which Wildelband and the Wertphilosophie expose themselves, when they subtract the cognitive and generalized purpose from the historical science. But it seems to us that we can say that such a risk is compensated for by new horizons, opened up to the new science, with the rediscovery, implicit in Windelband, but more and more explicit in the following authors, of the decisive role of the values in the social-historical science, which are one more time forced to revise the method of enquiry of the human-historical and social reality, that is of course the specific sphere where the empirical values can be formulated and carried out. H. Rickert still moves in this direction, because he accepts as a starting point Windelband's distinction between "nature" and "culture" by insisting that, since the cultural objects are always related to values as "Wertvolle Wirklichkeiten" (valuable realities) as well as since the natural objects are absolutely deprived of them, "through the relation to the values, if it is or not, we can ... distinguish two kinds of objects of science and we can use it only from a methodological point of view, because any cultural development, apart
6 7
Op. cit., p. 144. Op. cit., p. 145.
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SOCIAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL THEORY IN THE 19TH CENTURY from the value to which it is linked, has also to be considered as related to nature and is therefore nature itself'.8 Here, the Beziehung auf Werte (the relationship to values), while discriminating between natural science and cultural one, imposes itself as a logical-methodological presupposition of the social-historical science, and need the Verstehen (understanding) to reveal the value that is related to the cultural event. According to Rickert, this means that if the natural world is accessible only to the perception (Wahrnehmen), "the remaining objects of comprehension are ...just abstract significance or making of meaning. Only these ones are immediately caught, in fact, by existing they require from the science a kind of representation different from the one of the objects which can perceive the physical or psychic or material reality."9 Moreover we have to say, if we do not want to dissipate Rickert's significant conception of value (Wertgedanken) and of the Beziehung auf Werte, that "sense and meaning are characterized by a value and for this reason their perception without a reference to the value is scientifically vague". 10 Obviously also Verstehen needs an explanation from which neither Rickert nor we want to escape. So Rickert wonders: "apart from the ... "sympathetic reviviscence" (Nacherleben) of the psychic being, how far is it right to define history as a science which understands, distinguishing it from the science that clarifies (erklarende Wissenschaften)? The term "understands" (Verstehen) has a lot of meanings that we do not need to list here, and its theories are so many as the sense of the word... in order that the word does not loose its nleaning and importance for the methodological doctrine, we have to conceive the teml "understanding" as the knowledge of a particular argument which cannot be totally satisfied or clarified. Everything that has no sense or value is incomprehensible and, therefore, supposed that it is accessible to science, it can be simply described and explained as a senseless and valueless reality... "11 H. RICKERT: Kulturwissenschaft und Naturwissenschaji, TUbingen (Mohr) 1899/1926, p. 18; Italian translation: II fondamento delle scienze della cultura, by M. Signore, Ravenna (Longo) 1979, p. 69, chap. IV, Natura e cultura. 9 Op. cit., p. 19; Italian translation, cit., p. 70. lOOp. cit., p. 20; Italian translation, cit., p. 71. 11 H. RICKERT: Die Grenzen der Naturwissenschaftlichen Begriffsbildung. Eine logische Einleitung in die historischen Wissenschaften, TUbingen (Mohr) 8
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From this we realize that sense and value are tightly connected and ahnost coincide, and that value is considered as an "immaterial matter" (sense, to be exact) that requires a historical being which can let it materialize, or a discoverer of the sense hidden in the social-historical reality. Now it is quite easy to catch the effect that this moment of Rickert's philosophical reflection exerts, more or less directly, on the sociological theory, forcing it to an elaboration, that, in our opinion, has not finished, yet, even though it is already possible to catch some of its effects. ]2
II. The "Meaning Constitution" from Weber's Subjectively Intentioned Sense to Schiltz's Intersubjectivity In our approach to the sociological theories which animate, often in a lively way, the current discussion, the first decisive influences of Rickert's elaborations on the contemporary sociological theory meet with Max Weber's ones, because even though he rejected the master's pretence to develop a system of universally valid values and the ability to supply humans with absolute and incontrovertible criteria of orientation, he reconsiders the Wertbeziehung, but he uses it in a more worldly way and considers values as unreal and logical instruments with an exclusively heuristic function. Moreover Weber, in order to avoid misunderstandings about his support to a possible theory of values, insists very much on the moment of the "choice", as qualifying the relationship between the human action and values, and upholds the necessity that every important single action, and rather "life as a whole" (das Leben als Ganzes), has not to proceed as a natural event but in a conscious way, because "it represents a concatenation of decisions, through which the soul, as for Plato, chooses its own destiny". 13 1896/1929, pp. 424ff; (IV ed. 1921) for the "Verstehen" problem Rickert refers to Simmel, Spanger, Weber and Jaspers (p. 424, note 1). 12 At the end of his philosophical discourse, Rickert talks about a philosophy of history, in an objective way. For going deeper into the ontologie theory of Ricker's Weriphilosophie, see H. RICKERT: System der philosophie, Tiibingen (Mohr) 1921. 13 M. WEBER: "Der Sinn der 'Wertfreiheit' der soziologischen und okonomischen Wissenschaften" (1917), in: Gesammelte Aufsiitze zur Wissenschafftslehere,
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SOCIAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL THEORY IN THE 19TH CENTURY Weber's position about the "last decisions", which does not want to reduce life only to a natural event, is very much innovative about sociological research, that for the first time, thanks to Weber associates the social behaviours and first of all the social acts, not of rigid and fixed laws, but to the individuals' actions. This turning point will have a lot of consequences about the redefinition of the roles and the responsibility of the agents, but this is not the right context to deepen this further aspect of the problem. 14 What we want to notice is the importance of the change, that has to be ascribed to Weber's recovery of the "decision", that refers to the subjective ability of choice and the consequent, even implicit recall to the intentionality of the behaviour, as a new task of the sociological analysis. It is just this element of novelty that links Weber to Husserl, by allowing a sociological use of the phenomenological category of the transcendence of the conscience, which makes the German sociologist the father of modem sociology and the promoter of contemporary sociological theories. It is not casual that Alfred Schutz, at the beginning of his Der Sinnhafte Auffbau der sozialen Welt (The Meaningful Construction of the Social World), wants to nlake clear the aims of his work and recognizes his intellectual debts: "In this work it has been tried to go back to the origins of the problems of the social science, starting from the fundamental actions of the conscience. In this sense Bergson's and Husserl's research about the sense of the inner time has been fundamental. Only the works by these thinkers, and above all Husserl's transcendental phenomenology, has brought out the basis of the thought which can solve the problem of significance. In order to express to these philosophers my greatest admiration, I am deeply aware of how much this work and all my thought depend very much on their and Max Weber's writings." 15
Tiibingen (Mohr) 1973, IV ed., p. 508. Italian translation: "II signifieato della 'avalutativita' delle scienze soeiologiche ed economiehe", in: M. WEBER: Il metodo delle scienze storico-sociali, Torino (Einaudi) 1958, pp. 332-33. 14 For a deeper analysis of this aspect see MARIO SIGNORE: Senso e Significato in Max Weber, Leece 1977. 15 A. SCHUTZ: Der Sinnhafte Auffbau der sozialen Welt. Eine Einleitunh in die verstehende Sozi%gie, Frankfurt a.M. (Suhrkamp Verlag) 1974, pp. 9ff. Italian translation: La fenomen%gia del mondo sociale, Bologna (II Mulino) 1974, p.
4.
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MARIO SIGNORE Here is shown a well-defined cultural horizon, inside of which A. SchUtz tries to elaborate a concept of 'action', that, at least at the beginning had Weber's formula as reference, according to which action is an attitude to which "the actor or actors ... associate a subjective meaning",16 which let them link in an irreversible way, the development of the sociological meaning of the category of the 'significance', even referred to Husserl's phenomenology and to the structure of the social world, which requires the opening of the category of the 'sense' to the supra-individual dimension, and its introduction into the "complex of a more comprehensive constitution has as rea/iter its place without which it becomes unintelligible."1? But once this widening of the perspective has been grasped, the "significant constitution" trancends Weber's subjective sense and requires a more adequate consideration of the essential factor which makes it possible a "comprehensive constitution of the meaning" of the social world, that is intersubjectivity. In this way we have various possibilities of the discourse that, of course, we cannot reveal immediately, but that have to be taken into consideration for the qualifying influence they have on the sociological theory. The most important of them is the definition of the inter-subjectivity in a different and more complex context, than the one maintained by Weber, who even specifying that "not every kind of contact among men has a social characteristic, but only an attitude that is oriented in view of the others' attitude,,18 in the end simplifies this statement ina limitative way, by defining 'social action' as the attempt of two cyclists (today we would say nl0torists) to avoid the collision and "the squabble, the resolution or the pacific discussion which comes after the squabble."19
16 M. WEBER: Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Grundrip der verstehenden Soziologie 5. Revedierte Auflage besorgt von 1. Winckelmann, TUbingen (Mohr, P. Siebek), 1980. Italian translation: Economia e societa, Edizioni di Comunita, Milano 1968, p. 4. 17 R. BUBNER: Handlung, Sprache und Vernunft. GrundbegrifJe praktischer Philosophie. Neuausgabe mit einem Anhang, Frankfurt a.M. (Suhrkamp) 1976. Italian translation: Azione, Linguaggio, Ragione, Bologna (II Mulino) 1985, p.
20. 18 M. WEBER: Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, cit., p. 11; it. transl.: cit., p. 2. 19 Ibidem.
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The context in which A. Schlitz includes inter-subjectivity, which qualifies social action, comes from Husserl and is the one of the Lebenswelt, according the definition that he gives in Die Krisis der europiiischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phanomenologie20 . Thanks to this reference the intersubjectivity goes over the reductivity of collision between two fellows, as in Weber's example, and is caught in a whole of relationships, also "constituted in an anonymous way, where we move without having the awareness of the inter-subjectivity which has founded the sense. "21 But it is not all because Husserl's reference, reinforced by Bergson's classical theories about 'conscience' and 'duree', allows Schiltz to single out the origins of the subjective sense in the consciousness, from which the particular modality of the attention, revolved to past experiences of the ego. As Bubner underlines, interpreting Schlitz, "the sense, that in the simpIe ... flux of the experiences is latent, is the performance of the conscience that the ego achieves with reference to the past experiences. This experience, that has lived in the inner consciousness, is the basis of the phenomenological concept of the sense. In this perspective the actions look like a form of the living attempt". 22
III. The Analysis of Social Action in the Horizon of a Double Necessity and the Hermeneutic Opening Here it is clearly shown, at least according to our perspective, the tendency of the analysis and inquiry of social action, that certainly reveals the limits of the empirical sociology because of the necessity to consider the sphere of our liberties, as it is defined by F. H. Tenbruck, which otherwise would not have any nomological explanation, that intends to define the sphere of the 'regularity and not the one of the particularity or 'singularity' of the 20 E. HUSSERL: Gesammefte Werke, Husserliana, vol. VI, Haag (M. Nijhoft) 1976, in particular paragraphs 33 and 34, pp. 123-138. Italian translation: La crisi delle scienze europee e fa fenomenologia trascendentale, Milano (II Saggiatore) 1961, pp. 150-163, by E. Filippini and E .Paci, 1954. 21 R. BUBNER: Hand/ung, Sprache und Vernufl, Frankfurt (Surkamp) 1976, cit. Italian translation: cit., p. 20. 22 Ope cit., p. 22.
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social historical aspects. It does not mean that the nomological instance, with its heuristic value and the meaning of systematic objectivity, can be totally taken out of sociological research. It does not seem to us that, in sociology the comparison between 'nomothetic' and 'ideographic' has ever seen winners or losers. But it is just this lack of 'conclusion' that today forces us to live and think of a 'double necessity', that of the regularity and that of particularity, without the useless claim to repeal the one or the other. Living in the 'double necessity' does not mean to give up developing a science on the solid basis of the 'nomological', but to broaden the critical ability of the enquiry systems, by forcing them to pay attention to one's theoretical statute, that in this way can be dominated without being expelled. Opening our mind to this new ';'double necessity", means, however, that sociological theory should stand another comparison which allows it to broaden the horizon some more, according to 'comprehension'. We refer to the inevitable comparison between social theory and interpretative theory that is useful because of its function in the different systems of interpretation, by preventing both of them from acting in a hegemonic way. We do not demand to face here a comparison which can be full of implications and, of course, be productive with the object of the broadening of the theoretical statute of the social sciences. It is enough to put the question and indicate some of the interrogatives and necessities of the contemporary hermeneutics, which can be a further stimulus to talk about the possibility of the social sciences, that by then is considered part of a comprehensive sociology. Our theoretic purpose is to prize all the hermeneutical analysis highly, that finds any form of comprehension in the language, as a 'way of being', and that is open to that "architecture of sense, which can be called double or multiple sense, whose role is the one to show, step by step, by hiding,,23 and that, consequently requires "a mental process that consists in deciphering the hidden sense in the visible one, and the implicit levels of significance in the literal ones". 24 Now, it is clear that by talking about the interpretative instance we should not be any more satisfied with registering that complex system of signs, through which the social actions show themselves, as the individual ones, but, on the contrary, demand to go 'further' the sign, toward the existence that is hidden behind it and wants to come out, even in a never definitive way. 23 P. RICOUER: Il conflitto delle interpretazioni, Milano (Jaca Book) 1977, p. 26. 24 Ibidem.
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SOCIAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL THEORY IN THE 19TH CENTURY The interpretative task consists in the laborious effort to fill the gap between the interpreter and the 'thing', not only because of the impossible simultaneousness between the actor and the interpreter of the action as Schlitz definitely demonstrated, but also for the variety of the signs and of the meanings hidden behind any sign. All this requires the courage of the significant proposition, but also the patience to go deeper and deeper, in order to catch that variety of meanings that is the true richness of the human world, and that is often hidden behind the same sign. It is an engagement that is very much related to the professional sociologist, who should have, among his abilities, that 'interpretative patience' which makes him capable to comprehend the others at the same time he makes the comprehension of his own self deeper, and vice versa. All that cuts off to the sociologist from any chance to reduce the richness and complexity of the human behaviour and of the comprehension of the self, in a sort of dialectics of identification and alienation, which requires the conquest of the self: in order to have a better comprehension of the other. We do not want now to fall back into that situation of psychologistic solipsism or transcendental idealism. On the contrary, the interpretative instance, applied to the social research can contribute to make us consider how "the immediate consciousness is, first of all, 'false conscience "'25, and that the social scientist has to become free from this false consciousness, by thinking over the objectivity of the social action, that does not indicate an empty 'self or a 'vague and invincible truth' or a 'false thought,26, but a 'self continuously full of existence', connected to a relationship of dependence, that allows to give an objective value to the forms in which this relationship is expressed, from the archaeological to the theological and eschatological ones, which want to show a 'particular existential function'. 27 The interpretative proposal we have adopted, as in Paul Ricoeur's elaboration, could give more answers to the problems. If we want to give some examples, the discourse about 'validity', the use of the 'causality' category in sociology, the distinction between the ones who act and the ones who reflect on society, the contrast between daily activities and system, between liberty and nomology, are just some of the problems 25 Op. cit., p. 31. 26
Ibid.
27 Ope cit., p. 36.
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MARIO SIGNORE which could have a resolution by using hermeneutics, such as the one by Ricoeur, that after having been compared with phenomenology, which operates on an experienced level and the linguistic analysis, which operates on an enunciative level, reveals that "phenomenology and linguistic analysis together give life to the same descriptive and analytic discourse, whose unity will be better explained when it is opposed to it... another kind of constitutive and dialectic discourse, the one of the sensible action".28 In our opinion, the social science cannot escape from this discourse, because it has to make up for the interpretative instance and the ontological need which prevents it from loosing sight of the original data, revealed by the phenomenological method, that gives prominence to its superiority on the linguistic analysis. In fact, "phenomenology can understand its own limits, because it defers to its origins the linguistic analysis, but cannot do it because the methodological decision not to know the experience that in its proposition implies the oblivion of the matter of the originally, produces the cancellation of the matter about the origins of the sense".29 Sociology is not allowed to neglect this matter, because today it is summoned to examine the 'sensible' action.
28 P. RICOUER: La semantique de I'action, primiere partie: Les discours de I 'action, Editions du Centre National de la Recherce Scientifique, Paris 1977. Italian translation: La semantica dell 'azione, Milano (Jaca Book) 1986, p. 169. 29 Ope cit, p. 173.
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Parte
German Theory and Philosophy of History Today
Chapter 9
Philosophy of History After the End of Formative Substantial Philosophy of History: Remarks on the Present State of the Philosophy of History HANS MICHAEL BAUMGARTNERt
I.
II. III.
Different Approaches to the Philosophy of History and the Theory of History The Discemability of History as the Essential Problem of the Philosophy of History and Theory of History The Historical Rise and Decline of the Philosophy of History as a Central Discipline of Philosophy
Historical philosophy at the present day appears to be a rather unmethodical area of philosophical thought. The philosophy of history today is not - as it was up to half a century ago - about a fimlly laid down canon of retrievable concepts and categories. Nor may it be understood any longer, as it always was heretofore, as an expression of a homogenous historical outlook on life. It reveals itself much more as a reservoir of differing ways of posing questions that are partly dependent on one another, and partly cover the same ground as an ensemble of diverse and in part disparate problems and methods of approach. Therefore, to begin with, an ascertainment of the present position of historical philosophical thought has to be directed at the examination, putting into order and elucidation of the essential facts and problems. The contribution that follows is dedicated to this task. It deals with three areas of enquiry: I. The different implications of the philosophy of history. The treatment of this area of enquiry is supposed to serve to distinguish and examine the
HANS MICHAEL BAUMGARTNER n1ultiplicity of historical-philosophical approaches. It concerns itself directly, so to speak, with the present state the philosophy of history. 2. The essential problem of the philosophy of history or the enquiry into the historical process, the process of world history itself and its discemability. Here it concerns the central problem associated with history, the problem which involves first of all a philosophical exan1ination, and is, as an implicit question, at the foundation of all approaches, regardless of how this question is then answered. This chapter is orientated systematically according to its nature and possesses, moreover, a critical function. It deals basically with the essence and the possibilities of historical philosophy. 3. The formative substantial philosophy of history as a historical formation or the historical development of the philosophy of hist~ry. This chapter is concerned with the state of the philosophy of history in the past. It sketches out the path it took to become a fundamental discipline, the lode-star of the philosophy at a particular time, but also has to do with its decline and its neutralisation as a discipline. Thus it leads on to a more precise detennination of what is to be understood by the philosophy of history after the end of the formative substantial philosophy of history.
I. Different Approaches to the Philosophy of History and the Theory of History A review of the various meanings of philosophy of history may apply firstly to that 'innocuous' meaning, according to which one speaks in general of a philosophical examination of historical events, historical happenings and historical processes. It is, in this respect, a deliberate examination of history according to maxims and reflections in the face of historical occurrences that are in some way outstanding. Examinations of this kind are familiar. They are to be found in the history textbooks for schools as well as in the relevant literary articles of daily and weekly newspapers. If one were to look for the classical example of this way of looking at things, then without doubt Jakob Burckhardt's Weltgeschichtliche Betrachtungen 1 would be cited. With the characterisation of this meaning as 'innocuous', in speaking of history in this
JACOB BURKHARDT:
Weltgeschichtliche Betrachtungen (1868), 11 ed., Stuttgart.
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THE PRESENT STATE OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY manner, it is made clear that no systematic form of philosophical examination of historical happenings is presented but rather a more or less rhapsodic discussion of problems and perspectives which become intelligible to the historian during his work on the research and presentation of a past occurrence but intelligible also to the thoughtful observer of the conjunctures of circumstance. In this first significant area of the philosophy of history it is a matter, therefore, of it being, in the model case, the "historical prudence of wise historians"2 according to Odo Marquard's formulation. A second meaning, - basically the core one - adheres to the expression 'philosophy of history', when by it a philosophical theory is indicated or intended as an entire process. In theories of this type, the idea is that one can examine the essence, the origin, the end-purpose and the course of the entire process of 'history'. The philosophically most relevant impressive comprehensive theories of this kind are to be found in the historical-philosophical constructions of the school of German Idealism. The early Schelling's conception of a formative substantial philosophy of history based on reason may serve as an illustrative example3. Schelling is the first and probably the most consequential thinker to develop a systematic concept encompassing the whole of history using reason as a guide. He takes his point of departure from the transcendental reflection on the conditions of the feasibility of perception 2
3
MARQUARD: "Schwierigkeiten mit der Geschichtsphilosophie", in: 000 MARQUARD: Schwierigkeiten mit der Geschichtsphilosophie, 2nd ed., Frankfurt a.M. ]982, p. ]4. Cf.: FRIEDRICH WILHELM JOSEPH SCHELLING: Antiquissimi de prima malorum humanorum origine philosophematis genes. III explicandi tentamen criticum et philosophicum (1792), in the same reference, Historisch-kritische Ausgabe, commissioned by the Schelling Commission of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, edited by Hans Michael Baumgartner, Wilhelm Gustav Jacobs, Hermann Krings and Hermann Zeitner: Werke, vol. I, Stuttgart ]976, pp. 47-181; HANS MICHAEL BAUMGARTNER (Ed.): Schelling. Einfuhrung in seine Philosophie, Freiburg/MUnchen 1975; WILHELM GUSTAV JACOBS: "System und Geschichte. Neueste Forschungsergebnisse zu Schellings frUhester Entwicklung", in: DIETER HEINRICH (Ed.): 1st systematische Philosophie moglich?, Stuttgarter HegelKongress 1975, Bonn 1977, pp. 165-170; HANS MICHAEL BAUMGARTNER: "Vemunft inl Obergang zu Geschichte. Bemerkungen zur Entwicklung von Schellings Philosophie als Geschichts-philosophie", in: LUDWIG HASLER (Ed.): Schelling. Seine Bedeutung fur eine Philosophie der Natur und der Geschichte, Stuttgart 1981, pp. 175-192. 000
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and leads on to an idea of reason, which establishes itself as a valid base for all our knowledge. On the model of Kantian philosophy, Schelling conceives this reason as an articulated structure of perceptive functions. In his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant had set forth and argued for the following faculties of perception: the faculty of sentience, by means of which all material things are primarily given to us; the faculty of intelligence, that permits us to observe things in time and space according to their properties, to place them into a context of experiences and to identify them as objects. Finally, there is the faculty of reason in its narrower sense, whereby the concrete nature of experience of the world, that is perceived by our intelligence, is brought to an all-encompassing coherence of judgement, Le. expanded to its totality and thereby to the absolute. From these faculties, from sentience as the faculty of receptivity, from intellect as the faculty of conceptualisation and from reason (in its narrower sense) as the faculty of ideas there flows a systematic corpus of our perception, in so far as these faculties harmonise together of necessity and thus prove themselves to be part impulses for reason (in its wider sense). It is precisely this reason as the embodiment of human perception with its three functions of material observation, comprehension of the abstract and systematic linkage of our propositions in an integral scientific coherence that is now, for Schelling, the starting point for the establishment of a systematically elaborated, formative substantial philosophy of history. He expands this structure of reason out into time and reads it as a uniform yet at the same time articulated history of human development. The uncovered structural factors of reason become, thereby, highly important epochs of the historical process, in which reason itself becomes materialised. The first stage of the history of mankind is the direct and untroubled state of material perception, the paradise; the second stage marks a condition, in which the ensuing idea disintegrates and destroys the unity of life in the material perception, the stage of the fall from grace. The efforts connected with this stage to reverse this fall from grace, to overcome by reason the disruption of the world· and finally to unite again that which had been separated in a perfected condition of reason, lead to the third and last age, to the recovery of the paradisal state at, however, a new and higher level through the mediation of reason that reconciles all things. In this way the history of the world is, on the one hand, a history of the consciousness of humankind as a species, in so far as it moves humankind as a perceptive entity into the central position, and on the other hand at the same
152
THE PRESENT STATE OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY time as a history of the liberation of human reason out of the faint existence of sentience to the reflected existence of reason as a unity. In 1806 Fichte argued for a similar idea4 , as did Hegel in his historicalphilosophical scheme in Phanomenologie, Enzyklopadie and Rechtsphilosophie by founding his philosophy on the structural idea of reason. However, Hegel in a speculative dialectic describes in an essentially more complex nlanner, both materially and conceptually, the ascent of reason as being a reason that liberates itself to its own unique essence as pure spirit. The comparatively greater proxin1ity to historical reality in this concept is based on the fact that Hegel articulated the ondriving impetus of the negative, that is negativity, essentially more sharply He is able, in this manner, despite the processes of ascent and advance, to diagnose at the same time the factors of the decline and make them comprehensible. The thinking intrinsic to these philosophical theories and the claim to explain history according to a priori points of view were taken up in the following tradition ever and again - from Marx onwards - and it also forms the nucleus of those philosophical universal histories, which no longer refer back to the structure of the reason but seek to grasp the legitimacy of the historical process on the basis of another scheme of construction. All of these philosophical theories, that construe speculatively, allow fundamentally of three approaches to the interpretation of the historical process: 1. the interpretation of history as a process of ascent, to be located historically in the early and middle periods of the Enlightenment - an optimistic variation of the construction. 2. its pessimistic variation, the interpretation of history as a process of decline, as it develops in the late Romantic period and as it is still to be found in the twentieth century in Oswald Spengler's work 5 . 3. the interpretation of history as a process both of ascent and decline, i.e. as an intervention of both variants in the manner of an admittedly still positive balancing of accounts of history, the prototype and example of which is presented by Hegel's dialectic of history. In this second interpretative field, the philosophy of history is a philosophy of history of a speculative content, i.e. a material philosophy of history. 4 5
Cf. JOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTE: Grundzuge des gegenwartigen Zeitralters (1806) with an introduction, edited by Alwin Diemer, Hamburg 1979. Cf. OSWALD SPENGLER: Der Untergang des Abendlandes. UmrifJ einer MorphoLogie der Weltgeschichte, vol. 2, Mlinchen 1918/22.
153
HANS MICHAEL BAUMGARTNER Possible criticism of this type of a formative substantial philosophy of history has to pay attention to the manner and way in which the presupposed a priori part, for example the concept of reason, is reconciled with the empirical part, the selected and elaborated elements of historical knowledge. It has in particular to clarify what significance is due in each case to the a priori scheme of construction, what grounds namely are laid down for its own justification in the field. In the second chapter this will be further discussed. The third interpretation of philosophy of history includes the different philosophical approaches to the determination and the establishment of historical knowledge. What is meant here by philosophy of history is the formal epistemology of historical knowledge in opposition to the material philosophy of history. Because of the haphazard nature of this field, it seems expedient to take a retrospective glance at the history of the concept as a basis. The first to be recalled is Johann Gustav Droysen, the founder of the modem science of history. His Vorlesungen uber Enzyklopadie und Methodologie der Geschichte6 (Lectures on the Encyclopaedia and Methodology of History) cannot count as the founding charter of the speculative nor of the positivist theory of history. They include, however, the opening gambits of the notorious far-reaching disputes, from DiIthey on until the early and mid-20th Century, between the positivist natural sciences and the hermeneutic arts. In his Historik, Droysen posed the question in the Kantian tradition of transcendental philosophy about the prerequisites of historical knowledge, linking several philosophical approaches together with one another. The question of how something that happens in space and time can be understood as a historical event then is, to quote Droysen, how "history arises out of affairs." Posing this problem implies essential and, for historical theory, effectual distinctions, - for one thing, the drawing of a distinction between the course of everyday life and history, between mundane events and "affairs" (in the sense meant by Droysen) and that which contains significance as history, - for another, the distinction between the manifold histories, which present themselves as narratives and history proper, through which these histories are registered primarily as an element of history, as an all-embracing process, and finally the distinction between temporality in general and historical time, since not everything that is in time or runs a temporal course can straightaway
6
Cf JOHANN GUSTAV DROYSEN: Historik. Vorlesungen uber Enzyklopiidie und Methodologie der Geschichte, edited by Peter Leyh, Historisch-kritische Ausgabe, vol. I, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstadt 1977.
154
THE PRESENT STATE OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY be called historical. Let us imagine the running down of a mechanism, such as a musical box, which certainly represents a happening within time, but would we view it as history? Droysen's analysis of the processes of the cognition and presentation of history can show that in the knowledge of history it is not only objects and occurrences that are perceived but always, at the same time, the implications of the "moral world" as well, of the moral world that is linked to them. Here, in this way, the category of significance, which occupies central value status in Dilthey's Aufbau der geschichtlichen Welt7 , tnoves to the centre of interest. Representatives of neo-Kantianism, such as Heinrich Rickert 8 and Georg Simmel have gone back to Kant more uncompromisingly than Droysen. Simmel in particular sets forth in his early works the constructivist composition of our knowledge of history9. We do not observe history but construct it. What we observe are events in space and time. The conception of an occurrence as a historical event is enjoined in accordance with a system of interpretation which thereby makes possible a uniform narrative, that links what happens in connection to other happenings under one point of view that bestows uniformity and significance at the same time. Only on the basis of such a system of interpretation can emerge in the end the idea of a union of many stories, that is to the idea of a comprehensive process entitled history. At the beginning of the 20th century, the theory of history that is transcendental and hermeneutic on the one hand and constructivistically aligned on the other hand is put into question by the philosophy of life and by philosophic anthropology. These philosophical approaches contradict the a priori nature of the shaping of events; they interpret history as a product of life, through which the hunlan, as a being with needs, can primarily orientate himself in a world that is of itself in a state of chaos, disburden himself and maintain himself. Thinking about the historical nature of our historical knowledge leads ultimately to the historical nature of human existence itself. It was con-
7
8
9
WILHELM DILTHEY: Der Aujbau des geschichtlichen Welt in den Geistesgewissenschaften, edited by Manfred Riedel, 2nd ed., Frankfurt a.M. 1981. Cf. HEINRICH RICKERT: Naturwissenschaft und Kulturwissenschaft, examined and extended edition, Tlibingen 1926, new edition edited by Friedrich Vollhardt, Stuttgart 1986, and HEINRICH RICKERT: Die Probleme der Geschichtsphilosophie. Eine Ein-fuhrung, 3d ed., Heidelberg 1924. Cf. in particular GEORG SIMMEL: Die Probleme der Geschichtsphilosophie. Eine erkenntis-theoretische Studie, 5th ed., MUnchen/Leipzig 1923.
155
HANS MICHAEL BAUMGARTNER ceived initially in Heidegger's anthropology, and then freed from Heidegger's narrowing constraints and further developed in the universally applied HansGeorg Gadamer's hermeneutics. It is characteristic for these positions that they prevail in pushing through the idea of the historicity of historical knowledge against both the constructivistic and the transcendental a priori approaches. In this way, the hermeneutic theory of its historical nature thus marks the second form of a cognition theory of historical knowledge. In as much as it rests on the understanding and the historical nature of our knowledge, it does not, to be sure, disavow the feasibility of valid knowledge, but, for being able to be held to be valid knowledge, it is required that the reference to the historical dimension be established and that the object on which doubtlessly correct judgements should be passed, be understood as an essentially historical object. While the cognitive theory approaches presented up to now are still, after all, set off by and large against our knowledge of history, the type of historical cognition theory formed from it subsequently is linlited to the historical sciences: "The scientific theory of the historical sciences" is the title which characterises the philosophy of history as a cognitive theory of historical knowledge in a third sense. Its analytical variant applies neither to the historical occurrence itself, nor to our conceptions of history, but to the way and manner, in which we "discourse" about a happening in history. At the centre stands the analysis of sentences and speech. Its purpose is, on the one hand, a grammar of the vocabulary of history and, on the other, a methodology for the explanation of singular sentences. Consequently it repudiates every substantial or material philosophy of history. The problem of the nomological explanation of singular sentences in accordance with the Henlpel-Oppenheim system of scientific interpretation opens up a new variant of the "Comprehension(Verstehen)-Explanation Controversy" and leads in the end to a widely ramified and in many respects very productive discussion between the hermeneutic, the transcendental and the analytical tradition of the philosophy. In connection with this, my own attempt - as well as that of Jom RUsen sees in the mediation of analytical, transcendental, anthropological and hermeneutical theorems the task to work out, in comparison with that of Droysen, a "renewed study of history", forming the foundation of a uniform theory regarding our historical knowledge as a whole and, as a consequence, a uni-
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THE PRESENT STATE OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY form theory of the historical sciences 10 . Above all, this is a matter of three areas of inquiry: 1. what constitutes the historical object (occurrences and processes), 2. what are the problems of historical research (heuristic, systematic, interpretative), and 3. which is the form of historical presentation? The question of the provenance and validity of universal theories of history is one of the central problems, more precisely, as to whether such theories qualify as pure hypotheses or even tum out to be laws of history at all. Primarily, the following questions are posed: Are there laws for the facts of . history, which apply universally, or can the laws of history - if there be such things at all - be entitled merely to periodic validity? Are there, consequently, laws of only medium range? And: Do laws have validity, no matter how far they extend, a priori and ex ante or only a posteriori, ex post? Is it a priori laws or only empirical normalities that we discover after "history" has taken place and with the help of which we would be able to extrapolate into the future and foretell a future happening in broad outline? In this final question, modem historical theory touches on problems of the substantial philosophy of history. To sum up this first section: - The expression "philosophy of history" denotes, for one thing, more or less "prudent" reflections and considerations, which are employed in the face of historical research, historical findings from sources and the facts of history. For another thing, one always understands under philosophy of history something as well of the approach to an examination of the process of history as a whole. Finally philosophy of history is a collective concept for the most various epistenlological theories, therefore for 10
Cf. HANS MICHAEL BAUMGARTNER: Kontinuitdt und Geschichte. Zur Kritik und Metakritik der historischen Vernunjt, Frankfurt a.M. 1972; as well as: "Thesen zur Grundlegung einer transzendentalen Historik", in: HANS MICHAEL BAUMGARTNER, lORN ROSEN (Eds.): Seminar: Geschichte und Theorie. Umrisse einer Historik, Frankfurt a.M. 1976, pp. 274-302; lORN ROSEN: "Ursprung und Aufgabe der Historik", in: HANS MICHAEL BAUMGARTNER, lORN ROSEN (Eds.): Seminar: Geschichte und Theorie. Umrisse einer Historik, pp. 59-93; HANS MICHAEL BAUMGARTNER, lORN ROSEN (Eds.): Historische Vernunjt. Grundzuge einer Historik I: Die Grundlagen der GeschichtswissenschaJt, Gottingen 1983; HANS MICHAEL BAUMGARTNER, lORN ROSEN (Eds.): Rekonstruktion der Vergangenheit. Grundzuge einer Historik II: Die Prinzipien der historischen Forschung, Gottingen 1986.
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HANS MICHAEL BAUMGARTNER the posing of reflective questions, which relate to our conversations about history, and our cognition, perception, comprehension, interpretation and presentation of it.
II. The Discernability of History as the Essential Problem of the Philosophy of History and Theory of History Any debate on the central problem of a philosophy of history, that is the question concerning the historical process and its discernability, has to make allowance for the implied fact that "history" simply does not let itself be perceived. History is not identical with what happens in time and space. History and what has happened are not the same thing. Rather, history demands an interpretative model that allows it to label an event that occurs in space and time as a historical event. Only by such an interpretative system, an incident in space and time transcends to the historic dimension, and its significance is perceptible in the framework of more or less greater associations of occurrences. The "perception" of incidents as historical events and - in even much greater measure - the "perception" of a multiplicity of events as a historical process, assumes firstly, therefore, a peculiar capacity for abstraction, that is dependent on the. projection of a system that grants it meaning (or as Rickert would have called it "value"). The historical subject, whether it be an OCCUfrence or a process, is derived from an abstraction, and this abstraction originates in its tum from fashioning a model by which we bring individual facts, individual occurrences into a structure that bestows significance on it, incorporates it into a working model and awards it the appropriate significance. The "history overriding histories", as Droysen once fonnulated it Of history as "collective singular" (in Koselleck's expression 11) is not something given but a construct. How now are those models, through which the mundanely significant becomes history, to be determined? Which types of model can one discover, if 11
Cf. REINHART KOSELLECK: "Article Geschichte"", in: Geschichtliche Grund-
begriffe. Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in
Deutschland~
edited by Otto Brunner/Werner Conze/Reinhart Koselleck~ vol. 2~ Stuttgart 1975 pp. 666ff., and REINHART KOSSELLEK: Vergangene Zukunft. Zur Semantik geschichticher Zeiten, Frankfurt am Main 1979.
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THE PRESENT STATE OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY one looks back to philosophy of history in its development? It seems that above all there are two basic types, applied to the character of the historical process, that may be discerned. One can be characterised as the "biomorphic" type and the other as the "ratiomorphic" type. From the class of biomorphic conceptions, there are two to be named: firstly the type oriented on plant and growth symbolism, that is considered as a paradigm in Oswald Spengler's morphology of cultures. Spengler explained the origin, the blooming and the evanescence of the various cultures on the model of the laws governing the growth of different plants that are not dependant on one another; just like plants, cultures bloom, become mature and die out according to their own peculiar laws. Secondly, the type that goes back to Augustine and Cicero, which describes the course of world history as analogous to the sequence of the ages of man, - childhood, youth, maturity and old age. The ratiomorphic model type similarly has several variations, from which those of Kant, Schelling, Fichte and Hegel named above and briefly sketched out can be characterised as the classic ones. By them the structure peculiar to reason acts as a model, which brings to light a history and allows an interpretation, which extends from the first appearance of reason right up to its complete realisation. It is reason which is on the path to itself and is, ultimately, realised and comprehended as a unity of the power of reason. According to this model, history is realised as a history of the spirit. Another ratiomorphic type has been brought into the debate in the 1970s by Piaget, Kohlberg, Habermas and - with another centre of emphasis by GUnter Dux 12 as well under the label of "the learning process of the human species." To be sure, these extensions to such learning processes are thrown into reliet: being, above all, not conscious learning practices but practices put into operation by way of conditioned reflexes. Nevertheless, the ratiomorphic structure even of these conceptions manifests itself in that the morally responsible individual. This is emphasised in all of them and in an exemplary manner in Piaget, who links it to the ontogenetic development 13 . Habermas, in particular, has transposed the logic of the ontogenetic development of moral consciousness to the phylogenetic level, so that the final stage of the entire sociocultural develop-
12 Cf. GUNTER Dux: Die Logik der We/tbi/der. Sinnstrukturen im Wandel der Geschichte, Frankfurt a.M. 1982. 13 Cf JEAN PIAGET: Das moralische Urteil heim Kinde, Frankful1 a.M. 1973.
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ment is seen to lie in moral freedom 14. If in connection with these approaches, the problem still remains open as to how moral responsibility should emerge from receptive learning behaviour, and thus out of natural processes in their widest sense, so is it to be put on record that here too is an entity available that is analogous to the idealistic model of rational history. At the end of the history of development, the individual (and the collectivity) assume responsibility for itself and can perceive and, at the same time, shape the history out of which it proceeded, as the entity of history. In connection with abstraction and the forming of models, the important question arises as to how models of this kind can be justified philosophically. It has, indeed, to be shown by what right, in one case, world history is interpreted according to the seasons of a man's life, while, in another, humankind's world history should be interpreted according to the concepts of a developing reason that is coming to itself. How then are these models to be justified? That is one of the central questions of the philosophy of history. The conceptions of German Idealism start, as has been noted already, from a concept of reason, which one can ascertain for oneself in terms of cognitiontheory. Reason (in the wider sense) as finite reason is the framework of relationships of the cognitive functions, physical perception, concept of understanding and idea of reason, unified in the transcendental apperception of the "1 think." As a functional whole of the theoretical as well as of the practical perception of truth, it is the foundation of human self-understanding. Humankind has always made presuppositions in this way, when the individual speaks out about something; concerning history too, the claim of truth is raised. Hence, as an uncontested foundation, a fundamentum inconcussum, in such an attempt to reconstruct reason, the self-reflecting, morally responsible man is fonnulated idealistically by self-awareness. This connection is illuminating. For it shows that, in all these models, projections and transfers are in play. For one thing, afundamentum inconcussum is sought, that can be claimed and identified as a basis of our knowledge, (for example, reason or life); accordingly in its internal disposition, it is differentiated in itself, developed into a working model and ultimately projected onto history. The transfer of the model to all processes of genesis appears in the 14 Cf. LAWRENCE KOHLBERG: Zur kognitiven Entwicklung des Kindes, Frankfurt a.M. 1973; JORGEN HABERMAS: Kultur und Kritik, Frankfurt a.M. 1974; and JORGEN HABERMAS: Zur Rekonstruktion des historischen Materialismus, Frankfurt a.M. 1976.
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THE PRESENT STATE OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY course of history then as an intrinsic insight. If one then adds that outstanding occurrences from the "framework" of the model can be included by means of the theorem of the "contemporaneity of the non-contemporary" that dates back to Herder or, as the case may be, "the non-contemporaneity of the contemporary", then the essential elements of the substantive philosophy of history are denominated. Philosophies of history of this type are immune against criticism. They are irrefutable but, because of that, are therefore problematic. The central problem in regard to this model is the question concerning the clues to its fundamental validity. As a rule, it concerns a concept that is used with reference to the character of humankind. In German Idealism it is defined, by the concept of human reason, as a self-aware and moral character, whereas the concept of the learning process based in the anthropological approaches identifies it as a biological creature of needs exclusively concerned with survival. There is always present in the concepts a sort of information, acting as clues, about the character of what humankind is "in truth", so that what appears as the character of history depends on the selfunderstanding of humankind. Assuming that humankind is in truth selfawareness, the history of the world becomes the history of reason developing to the point where it realises its essential uniqueness. Assuming, however, that the human is in truth a creature of needs, history is a necessary process of relief and compensation for the survival of this character. What status is accorded, as a consequence of these models, to the things mentioned above? What cognitive meaning can be awarded to them? It is certain that the question of whether these models make an essential insight possible into the course of history has to be denied. To be sure, they evoke the appearance of containing a priori laws governing history. However this alleged a priori nature lies, at best, at the level of the model that is cultivated, not at the level of the actual course history takes. Consequently, one will be able to say that these nl0dels do not have the status of an a priori insight into world history and that the same holds true for the philosophies of history that are orientated towards these models. It seems to me to be just as important, however, that these models are, on these grounds, by no means without nleaning. They can serve as heuristic designs for the discovery and interpretation of available historical material. That they do not allow any prognosis is true, but they make it possible to test other alternative models, i.e. to debate the question which sequences of events, measured against which models, are to be revealed and to be made intelligible. In short, they are germane to the heuristics of historical research.
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HANS MICHAEL BAUMGARTNER The critique of the material and substantive philosophy of history of this kind, therefore, does not go so far, as to dismiss as being without meaning in itself, as the unreflected fancy imputed here that one could with such models have a grasp of world history. Much more does the philosophy of history perceive its function in the historical sciences, as being that of interpretation in so far as these models furnish heuristic ideas, which can act as projects for the interpretation of the material content of history. If one pursues these thoughts further, then the consequence demonstrates that philosophy of history is possible only as a formal a priori theory of historical knowledge 15 . A "transcendental dialectic of historical reason" can show, namely, that, on the one hand, it is by no means meaningless to present the fonning of models in the manner described as guides to the process of historical research, yet, on the other hand, no penetration of the essence in history is to be gained thereby. Thus it is shown that history is not an a priori recognisable and observable process of development, neither is it a process of evolving the "absolute in the finite", as Schelling claimed in his middle and later periods, nor is it a history of the development of reason, finding its way to itself in the Hegelian sense, nor a process of mankind's self-liberation from all servitude, as in historic materialism. History is much more an open process, in which it depends on every person involved in the action and the conditions of the action. It is an ensemble of histories, which are co-determined by the action of humans and are retrospectively interpreted by the acting persons themselves. Generally speaking, history is a happening occurring freely, and not at anyone's command. It is fate. It is a happening arising out of human liberty, not an a priori process leading to liberty. For this reason, it can and must be evoked and be ever newly actualised as a deposit of human destiny.
15 Cf. HANS MICHAEL BAUMGARTNER: "Thesen zur Grundlegung einer transzendentalen Historik" in: HANS MICHAEL BAUMGARTNER, JORN ROSEN (Eds.): Seminar: Geschichte und Theorie. Umrisse einer Historik, ibid., pp. 274-302.
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III. The Historical Rise and Decline of the Philosophy of History as a Central Discipline of Philosophy Philosophy contains both fundamental - or central - disciplines and marginal disciplines, "hyphenated philosophies" 16, within its canon of subjects. Even a superficial observation of the history of philosophy allows three central disciplines to be discerned, which one can characterise when looking at Plato or Aristotle and also at late Kant. Philosophy always concerns itself essentially with our thinking, therefore its central discipline is logic. It is also concerned with the objects of our world, at its core it is constantly - to fonnulate it in Kantian terminology - a metaphysic of nature, or as the case may be, physics as Platonists understand it. Philosophy is always constantly concerned with human actions, looking at those of the single individual and at the social context as well. It is at its core a theory of human activities; it is ethics or once again in Kant's fonnulation - a metaphysic of freedom. These core disciplines shape the basic structure of philosophising, which reifies itself in the course of the historical development of philosophy in variously changing and alternating historical formations. The historical formations of philosophy are determined by the fact that a specific theme, or a particular type of philosophical approach or a special fundamental perspective on the world as a whole, come to the fore, in the breach of which each of the three core disciplines manifest themselves in another light, without their basic elements having been called into question. In this a differentiation is made as to whether logic, physics and ethics, are being thematised in the perspective of the question about existence and, consequently, in the historical constellation of ontology, or whether they stand under the systematic ascendancy of cognition theory, anthropology, linguistic philosophy or even philosophy of
]6 "Hyphenated philosophies" means in German all philosophical disciplines formed by linking the object of that discipline by a hyphen to philosophy like "Geschichts-Philosophie" or "Sozial-Philosophie". Since the English language does not use a hyphen in this case, but links the object of the philosophical discipline to this discipline by the preposition "of' like in "philosophy of history", the teml "hyphenated philosophies" should be rendered by the term "philosophies of'. By making philosophy the subject of the genitivus objectivus of a field outside of philosophy proper the philosophical endeavour seems to be depotentiated (editor' s note).
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history, which advanced to become the ruling fundamental philosophy some two centuries ago 17 . For the observer of the history of philosophy the process is extremely illuminating in that philosophical formations of this type are epochal structures, which disappear again from the field of view after a certain period of operation and then are included as hyphenated philosophies in the stock of subjects in philosophy and are "neutralised" into becoming philosophical disciplines alongside others. A comparable process is characteristic too for the history of the philosophy of history. Philosophy of history nowadays is a formerly dominant fundamental philosophy neutralised into being a marginal discipline. It finds itself, thereby, alongside all the disciplines which are not core disciplines such as logic, physics and ethics, but merely particular perspectives and ways of approach, in comparison to what everyone is interested in at all times in it, being placed in perspective and taken into view. It is at all times interesting, whether and whereby we can think clearly and logically. It is always of interest how we as human beings in nature and the universe should be able to comprehend nature, and it is always of interest which are the fundamental concepts and principles of our actions. It is always of interest, how we respond to other humans and deal with them rationally. Therefore the conlplex of questions of logic, natural metaphysics (physics) and ethics are of interest at all times. However, the question of existence, the problem of cognition, the theme of history are not of interest at all times, at least not in a comparable way. In ancient days, for example, on the basis of the presentation of cosmic eternal recurrence and of the integrated nature of humankind also in this cosmos, history as an autonomous thenle of philosophical observation has been attracted as little attention as, say, problems of cognition, which have drawn the primary attention of philosophy in the new era, with the entry of a new picture of the world and thereby have established gnoseology as a fundamental discipline focusing all other problems. In a similar manner, so too has philosophy of history become a guide both for the reflection and for the philosophical interpretation of reality, only a certain historical constellation. This (development asserts the formative substantial philosophy of history as a his17 Cf. 000 MARQUARD: "Schwierigkeiten mit der Geschichtsphilosophie", 2nd ed., Frankfurt a.M. 1982, p. 1. Also ODO MARQUARD: "Geschichte/Geschichtsphilosophie", in: Staatslexikon, edited by the Gorres-Gesellschaft, vol. 2~ Freiburg/BasellWien 1986, pp. 924-936.
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THE PRESENT STATE OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY torical formation that, at a fixed tin1e, by its perspective, which as it were transforms everything into history, became simply the guiding perspective of philosophy - became a guiding perspective such as is represented, one may probably claim, at the present time by the linguistic turn of the philosophy of language. The golden age of the formative substantial philosophy of history started with the Enlightenment and the philosophies that followed on after it. It was Voltaire who introduced the concept "philosophy of history" into idiomatic use; at the same time, as Reinhart Kosellek has shown, it was precisely at that period that in speech the collective singular "history" was formed, and thus it was the first time that history as a totality and a separate effective power was marked of from the multiplicity of stories referred fron1 life and to life and was elevated to the central and singular theme 18. What further circumstances are to be shown for the genesis of formative substantial philosophy of history as the fundamental discipline dominant in its day? Firstly, one will have to refer to some deficiencies, mistaken information and blank spots in the intellectual store house of that time. The idea of an ordered and meaningful cosmos, such as it had been assigned by the Greeks and also by medieval philosophy as the underlying thinking basic to all knowledge and actions, - this idea of a cosmos had been rendered obsolete by the experimental research of the natural sciences. At the same time, metaphysics above all had fallen into disrepute. It had "abdicated" firstly in favour of nominalism with regard to epistemology and later, in respect of its metaphysical content, it had given up in the collapse of theodicy. The question of whether one could justify God in the face of the wickedness and the evil in the world had found its answer in the insight that one would have to basically exculpate God if one then wanted to save Him. This led ultimately - with o. Marquard - to His "abolition" and to the establishment of an "atheism ad majorem Dei gloriam"19. Loss of the cosmos - loss of the Absolute. Their place was taken by humankind, who now had to take over and to bear the burden of the absolute and the burden of the role of the cosmos for endowing
18 Cf. REINHART KOSELLECK: "Historia vitae magistra. Ober die Autlosung des Topos im Horizont neuzeitlich bewegter Geschichte", in: REINHART KOSELLECK: Vergangene Zukunfl. Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten, Frankfurt a.M. 1979, pp.38-66. 19 aDO MARQUARD: "Wie irrational kann Geschichtsphilosophie sein?", in: DDO MARQUARD: Schwierigkeiten mit der Geschichtsphilosophie, ibid., p. 70.
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HANS MICHAEL BAUMGARTNER meaning. The human then has become an absolute and autonomous being whose areas of experience, action and life have by this time turned into history. History, which the human person moreover makes herself and for which therefore she has also to be responsible, became for the human person an absolute horizon, a horizon at any rate for the endowment of meaning. On this path, formative substantial philosophy of history separated itself from cosmos-orientated metaphysics, and put in a claim to replace it, but the theme of history stepped into the foreground, not only philosophically regarding the history of the mind but also at the political level. The problem of the ius gentium in the framework of the community of states that was being developed, the idea of natural law as a right for all men and the Utopia of the League of Nations denote questions of life, which seem to be soluble only within a historical-philosophical horizon. They are a further condition for the genesis of formative substantial philosophy of history as a historical formation of philosophy. That it has been the formative substantial philosophy of history that became the dominant philosophy precisely at this moment in history can be made plausible by the following reflection. At all tin1es, it seems to hold true that when the then dominant view of the world, whatever it be, experiences a disturbance, since the basic assumptions giving meaning to it disappear, the deficiency in taken up and compensated for by a suitable substitute. If the natural order can no longer be the background, from which everything is to be ordained and comprehended, if Almighty God is no longer available as an establishing horizon and the notion of the Creator no longer possesses any binding force, then substitutes are, as it were, sought of the necessity, substitutes for the loss of Nature and for the loss of God. The thought of "history", at the relevant time under discussion, offers itself as such a substitute, since it is precisely in "history" that the human can comprehend herself in her autonomy, indeed in her absoluteness, as it seems, in a certain way. It is exactly in this way that both a change of perspective as well as a transformation in style of thinking is accomplished: History now becomes a guiding concept, which can take the place both of the divine cosmos and of the Absolute God; in as much as it occupies this position, it becomes the new symbol of redemption for mankind. Alongside the conditions sketched out in closer detail, there are more remote ones to be perceived for the origin of a formative substantial philosophy of history as a historical formation. They were rooted in the discussion about formative substantial philosophy of history in particular under the label
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THE PRESENT STATE OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY "Secularisation of Christian eschatology". This is supposed to imply that the formative substantial philosophy of history in accordance with its distant provenance in Western tradition is to be understood as a product of the secularisation of Christian sacred history. In this sense Karl Lowith expounded the thesis that the eschatology of Christianity has been secularised into becoming, in the course of time, a doctrine of internal expectation of the salvation of man in the framework of history20. This thesis, however, does not address the circumstances of the case exactly enough. If the points of correspondence between the Christian eschatology and the assumptions of formative substantial philosophy of history are to be ascertained, then it must not be overlooked that the thought of "history" was shaped in the early Christian era by the fact that the Eschaton, the Last Things, was not coming at exactly the point of time it was expected and that the immediately expected Second Coming of Christ had failed to arrive. The thought of "history" is not therefore a concept, which would have been formed in the late Middle Ages or even firstly in the modern era through a secularisation of the concept of the Final Days, the Eschaton. Much more was it the failure of the Parousia to arrive and the entry of the Church for reasons of the need to bridge time, which led to the development of a historical consciousness of salvation. If, therefore, the discussion is to be about secularisation, then it should not be about a secularisation of eschatology but about ecclesiology becoming more worldly and secularised. Consequently, in considering Karl Lowith there should be a precise definition. The historical conception of salvation of Christendom is the product not of thinking about the Last Days but about the non-appearance of the Last Days. Formative substantial philosophy of history is not, therefore, about eschatology becoming part of the world but about the secularisation of church history. Thus, so far as it concerns the more remote conditions for the origin of the formative substantial philosophy of history, the origin of historical thinking lies not in the notion of the last days but in the perception of the institution of the Church, in its vocation to be the bridge and the path to salvation. Church history becomes formative substantial philosophy of history at the very moment in which in the face of the Enlightenment's critique, the Church collapses in its authority and, consequently, also in its claim to be the instance 20 KARL LOWITH: Weltgeschichte und Heilgeschehen. Die vorausgesesetzten Voraussetzungen der Geschichtsphilosophie', Stuttgart 1953, reprinted in: KARL LbwITH: Samtliche Schriften, vol. 2, Stuttgart 1982.
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HANS MICHAEL BAUMGARTNER and sacrament of historical salvation. It is precisely Voltaire's critique of the Church that confirms this connection. It does not criticise a false Eschaton, but the false claim of the Church to authority. Its criterion is reason. Formative substantial philosophy of history as a historical formation is, on that account, the idea of reason and the idea that reason by its developing historically into the consummation of mankind becomes dominant. An example of this is Schelling's formative substantial philosophy of history of sketched out above. Why did this fom1ation come to collapse? The first cause is, without doubt, to be seen in the disintegration of the substantialist philosophy of reason of the school of Gem1an Idealism. If the reason was the sustaining principle of the Enlightenment and of German Idealism, then, with the end of this philosophy, that which had to appear as its stringent consequence, namely the metaphysical historical philosophy orientated on reason and its selfrealisation, had to become invalid at the same time. Despite all the criticism of the absolute power of reason, as it gains shape in the later philosophies of Fichte and Schelling and then, later on, by Marx, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, there remains, admittedly, the irrefutable realisation that even today we cannot renounce an a priori concept of reason. With this, reason is no longer indeed taking the part of an absolute substance of reason in the Hegelian sense, but allowance is made for the fact that without a structural concept of reason comparable with the idealistic, namely transcendentalist concept21 , a philosophy or science is not possible, nor is it to be warranted in its claims to be accepted as true. The second reason for the collapse of the formative substantial philosophy of history lies in the bewildering experience that history proved to be an ambivalent happening just at that very moment, at which one could at long last be convinced that it lay now in humankind's own hands. This moment was the French Revolution and the crisis that followed directly at its heel, its debacle. This debacle signifies - in principle - the end of the optimism about progress and equally so the end of that pathetic formative substantial philosophy of history which was a priori confident of the perfection and of the good ending of the world.
21
Cf. in addition H. M. BAUMGARTNER: "Ereignis und Struktur als Kategorien einer geschichtlichen Betrachtung der Vemunft''', in: NORBERT A. LUYTEN (Ed.): Grenz/ragen, vol. 12, Freiburg/Miinchen 1982, pp. 175-217.
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THE PRESENT SrrATE OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY The rise of the empirical-historical humanist sciences and, as a consequence of that, the gaining of ground in the humanities of theories of cognition and science are to be called in as the third reason for the collapse. Droysen's and Ranke's argument against both, against the positivist writing of history and against German speculative historical philosophy, was successful and of a long-lasting effect. History remains, it is true, the all-embracing reality. However, it is no longer observable through reason's self-reflection. The fourth reason lies in the parvenu rise of the admittedly naturalistic, yet even so speculative social sciences, being studied as a paradigm of Auguste Comte's "social physics" and in the recurrence of the idea of Nature coming along with it, which is gradually establishing itself in each of its differing modifications as a new powerfully effective counter-concept to history, consequently in the naturalism of the 19th Century, in philosophical anthropology, but also - and primarily - in the new metaphysics of evolution. The cosmos has been scattered into infinity and thus lost. God is dead and now, it must be said, history too is at its end. What consequences this process of the erosion of meaning has for the position of the human person she herself must grasp, moreover since it is no longer possible for the human person to believe on the basis of experience that she herself - as humankind - could take the place of the cosmos, let alone that of God. It is the self-understanding of the human, as a pure being of nature, which emerges from this situation, with all the difficulties, which in particular stem from the fact, that the human as this natural being is not only alive but also acts upon herself and consequently cannot but, at least, assert herself as a morally responsible being. The idea of Nature, after the precedent of Schelling and the Romantic, returns to philosophy; even though it be deprived of potency, it is all the same once more a sign of salvation. The consequences of the plausible and, however evident it may have become, not unwarranted decline of the formative substantial philosophy of history as a fundamental philosophy may be summarised in three issues: 1. The philosophy of history is neutralised as a discipline to being but one hyphenated philosophy alongside nun1erous others. 2. Its previously overblown claim leads to a critical restriction of its approach and equally so to a restriction of the assertions claimed by it regarding history in general. Philosophy of history turns into the epistemology of historical knowledge and, where it becomes elevated, into " the critique of historical reason". This title, an expression of Dilthey's, if it is taken up in a
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HANS MICHAEL BAUMGARTNER modified form, could probably best characterise the present constitution and conceptual orientation of the discipline of philosophy of history. 3. The pathos originally bound into the formative substantial philosophy of history has departed elsewhere with its decline, firstly into the pathos of the natural sciences and the social utopias that march along with them, later into the consciousness of salvation of a new mythology, into the "Resurrection of Metaphysics", equally so in the myth of "Life" and ultimately too into the philosophy of the identity of evolution. Pathos, thus let free and ending up without an object or master, proves to be the most problematical consequence of the neutralisation of the formative substantial philosophy of history. The fate of the human that has become autonomous and settled in herself as being absolute, becomes apparent in the eventualities discussed for the philosophy of history and the fate of the formative substantial philosophy of history as a historical formation. Just like the formative substantial philosophy of history, so too does the human person fail with the excessive demands she makes on herself and on the hybrid claim, that she is able to assure for salvation and historical-philosophical perfection and able to take control of it by means of the history made by humankind itself. Is there, therefore, only educated scepticism left to be with us? This question is to be answered in the affirmative, as far as it refers to the result, the stages and even the beginning of history. Scepticism has, however, to be refuted, when considering - which despite all the arguments is still possible - the self-perception of the human person, as a finite being of reason, as a creature of nature, who is capable of perception and has to bear moral and practical responsibility. What therefore does the philosophy of history consist in after the end of the formative substantial philosophy of history? What can it be? Firstly, a critique of the speculative formative substantial philosophy of history in its manifestly always recurring overblown claim. Secondly, a theory of historical reason, a critical study of history that discusses the possibilities of our historical knowledge and also fixes the structures and significance of the perceptions of historical science with the result that our knowledge of history is only appropriate for orienting our responsible activity, not for anticipating it. Lastly, the perception of the non-dispositional character of history and the character of destiny within it. The philosophy of history following the end of the formative substantial philosophy of history is a critique of historical reason. It has reference to history itself as a regulative idea of history, like our self-understanding and our action. It is an initiation into self-perception.
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THE PRESENT STATE OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY However, it is no longer an occasion for self-deception or an inducement to human arrogance.
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Chapter 10
Why Kant's Reflections on History Still Have Relevance HERTA NAGL-DOCEKAL
I. II. III. IV.
The Idea of Historical Progress Three Paradigmatic Objections to Philosophy of History Why Kant's Reflections on History Remain Untouched by the Current Critique Philosophy of History: An Indispensable Project
I. The Idea of Historical Progress Is philosophy of history still possible today? Before addressing this question, I first need to clarify exactly what the term 'philosophy of history' means. A quick review reveals that the term has been used in a number of very different ways. In more recent debates, the following issues - to mention only a few variants - have been discussed under the rubric 'philosophy of history': the question of the scholarly status of history as a discipline; the fundamental ontology of the historicity of human beings; the analysis of narrative constructions of history by means of the philosophy of language; as we)] as reflective observations in the form of maxims and reflections (what Odo Marquard, in his inimitable style calls the "historical wisdoms of wise historians" 1). In spite of this, there does appear to exist wide-spread agreement about the core of the term's original meaning: the expression 'philosophy of history' - which, according to etymological research, was used for the first time in MARQUARD, aDO: Schwierigkeiten mit der Geschichtsphilosophie, Frankfurt a.M. (Suhrkamp) 1973, p. 14.
KANT'S REFLECTIONS ON HISTORY 1764 by Voltaire in his review of Hume's Complete History of EnglanJ2 refers primarily to the project of interpreting the development of humanity as a whole. It is revealing that the collective singular 'history' (die Geschichte) arose approxinlately contemporaneously to Voltaire's coining of the term. 3 This original understanding of the expression 'philosophy of history' designates, in terms of its argument, the conception of humanity's progressive improvement, as was characteristic in Enlightenment thought and the theoretical tradition emerging from it. 4 Historians of philosophy remain divided as to whether we should regard this project as a genuinely modem one 5 , or whether we must, on the contrary, trace it back to a transformation of the eschatological thought of the Judeo-Christian tradition (as Karl Loewith 6, Jakob Taubes 7 and other representatives of the secularization thesis have argued). However, the agreement that the philosophy of history's central thematic was initially located in the idea of progress is untouched by this controversy.8 There are many indications that the terminological expansion mentioned above only arose in connection with the increasing critique of this original conception and with the numerous attempts to place other projects in its place. 9 In order to avoid ambiguity, I will use the expression 'philosophy of history' in the 2
3
4
5 6
7 8 9
See the entry "Geschichtsphilosophie" written by U. DIERSE and G. SCHOLTZ in: Historisches Worterbuch der Philosophie, vol. 3, Darmstadt (Wissenschaft-liche Buchgesellschaft) 1974, pp. 416-439. KOSELLECK, REINHARD: "Historia Magistra Vitae. Ober die Auflosung des Topos im Horizont neuzeitlich bewegter Geschichte", in: KOSELLECK: Vergangene Zukunjt. Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zez"ten, Frankfurt a.M. (Suhr-kamp) 1979, pp.38-66. For a detailed account of the development of the concept of historical progress see ROHBECK, JOHANNES: Die Fortschrittstheorie der Aufkliirung. Franzosische und englische Geschichtsphilosophie in der zweiten Hiilfte des 18. Jahrhunderts, Frankfurt a.M./New York (Suhrkamp) 1987. E.g. BLUMENBERG, HANS: "Die Legitimitat der Neuzeit", Philosophische Rundschau, 15 (1968) pp. 195-201. LOEWITH, KARL: Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen, Stuttgart (Kohlhammer) 1953. TAUBES, JAKOB: Abendliindische Eschatologie, Berlin (Mattes & Seitz) 1947. See ANGEHRN, EMIL: Geschichtsphilosophie. Grundkurs Philosophie, vol. 15, Stuttgart/Berlin/Koln (Kohlhammer) 1991. For a well informed summary of these developments, including a very useful bibliography, see the lexicon entry quoted in note 2.
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HERTA NAGL-DOCEKAL following reflections to refer to this original idea of progress. However, does such an understanding not relegate the term to philosophical history? Haven't we learned to regard this original project as having failed? It is a received opinion today that the idea of progress has been definitively overcome. However, it is precisely here that I would like to take up the issue once again. In the first part of my presentation, I will rehearse three characteristic objections to the philosophy of history (for obvious reasons, I can proceed here only in an exemplary fashion). Following this, I will consider whether these objections do, in fact, justify the complete dismissal of the philosophy of history which has become so widely accepted.
II. Three Paradigmatic Objections to Philosophy of History The rejection of the idea of progress is almost as old as the idea of progress itself. We could recall, for example, Herder's objections to Voltaire and Hume, which were published in 1774 1 However, I willlinlit myself here for reasons of topicality to objections which have been raised in the 20 th century. The first of my three examples is Karl Popper's critique of the philosophy of history levelled fronl the perspective of the philosophy of science. Popper's argument is the following: Insofar as the philosophy of history takes as its subject human history as a whole, it also speaks about the future; and it does this in a way which makes it impossible for us to test the empirical validity of those statements. Consequently, Popper argues, the philosophy of history belongs in the domain of prophecy and not that of science. 11 It is clear that this train of thought only signifies a repudiation if conceptions of the philosophy of history are actually formulated, as Popper presumes here, with the selfunderstanding of empirical science. In what follows, we must question whether this is always the case and, at the same time, investigate whether
°.
10 HERDER, JOHANN GOTTFRIED: "Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit", in: HERDER: Siimtliche Werke, ed. by B. Suphan, Hildesheim (Olms) 1967, vol. 5, p. 524. 11 POPPER, KARL: The Poverty ofHistoricism, London (Routledge & Paul) 1944/45, chapter 2; and POPPER, KARL: "Prediction and Prophecy in the Social Sciences", in: GARDINER, PATRICK (Ed.): Theories of History, Glencoe (The Free Press) 1959, p. 276.
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KANT'S REFLECTIONS ON HISTORY statements about the future which are not intended to be empirically verifiable or falsifiable can, in fact, only have the character of a 'prophecy'. In doing so, we will take into consideration Kant's concept of "a divinatory historical narrative of things imminent in future time,,12. We must bear in mind as well the fact that while Popper's critique was articulated in the language of the philosophy of science, its actual driving force lay in the thesis that totalitarian systems of the 20th century have their theoretical roots in the mode of thought of the philosophy of history. This thesis is also shared by the two other critics of the idea of progress whom I will consider here. The following objection is characteristic of Critical Theory - my second example: the philosophy of history gives rise to claims by a particular group that they are currently, to speak in the terminology of Hegel, "managing directors of the world spirit" (Geschaftsfiihrer des Weltgeistes)13 - in other words, that they alone are in a position to know what must be done and what steps are necessary in order to lead humanity to a better future. Anyone pursuing other goals appears, from this perspective, to be the enemy. In this way, the philosophy of history legitimates repression and terror. According to Walter Benjamin, the victims suffer twice here: first, through their actual death, and then through the fact that historical narrative, which has adopted the perspective of the victors - that is, the self-appointed carriers of progress - remains silent about them as victims. Benjamin stated that "even the dead will not be safe from this enemy, ifhe is victorious."14 In a similar way, although from different presuppositions, Nietzsche had already polemicized against the philosophy of history, accusing it of being "idolatry of the factual" (Gotzendienst des Tatsachlichen 15 ). In this regard, Benjamin argued that we must attempt - both in our dealings with history as we]] as in
12 KANT, IMMANUEL: "An Old Question Raised Again: Is the Human Race Constantly Progressing?", in: KANT: On History, ed. by Lewis White Beck, Indianapolis (Bobbs-Merrill) 1963, p. 137. 13 HEGEL, GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH: Vorlesungen zur Philosophie der Welt~ geschichte, Frankfurt a.M. (Suhrkamp) 1970, p. 46. 14 BENJAMIN, WALTER: "Uber den Begriff der Geschichte", in: BENJAMIN: /lluminationen. Ausgewiihlte Schriften, Frankfurt a.M. (Suhrkamp) 1977, p. 253. 15 NIETZSCHE, FRIEDRICH: "Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie flir das Leben'" in: NIETZSCHE, FRIEDRICH: Siimtliche Werke. Kritische Studienaus-gabe, ed. by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, Berlin-New York (De Gruyter) vol. 1, 1980, p. 309.
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our actions - to live up to the messianic expectations which have been passed on to us - the living - from the victims of the past. In Benjamin's eyes, incorporating the disappointed hopes of the victims into our own demands requires letting go of the notion of historical progress "in the consciousness of blasting the continuum ofhistory"16. Benjamin's famous metaphor of taking a "tiger's leap into the past" 17 is to be read from this perspective. In their Dialectic of Enlightenrnent (written in 1947), Horkheimer and Adorno also argue that the philosophy of history unavoidably takes the side of the victor, when they object that progressive thought amounts to "scorn for the weak" 18. Horkheimer and Adorno, however, pay particular attention to the identification of historical progress with technological innovation - an identification which is still common today - arguing that the domination of nature can easily turn into its opposite: "No universal history leads from savages to humanity, but very well fronl the catapult to the atom bomb. Universal history ends in the total threat of organized humanity against organized humans... Through this, Hegel is at the same time horribly verified and turned upon his head."19 The objections raised by Jean-Fran~ois Lyotard - my third example - are viewed by many authors as the definitive "point of no return" for the philosophy of history. In his study "The Postmodern Condition," Lyotard uses the expression "grand narrative"20 (grand recit) in order to characterize the object of his critique referring at the same tinle to the thought of Kant, Hegel and Marx. Lyotard points, above all, to two problems here. The first lies in the erasure of diversity. In terms of motif, Lyotard picks up here - albeit without thematizing it - on a reservation first expressed by Herder: If past realities are considered solely from the perspective of their significance for later developments, then their richness and heterogeneity are lost from view.
16 BENJAMIN (lac. cit., p. 259). 17 Ibid. 18 HORKHEIMER, MAX and ADORNO, THEODOR W.: Dialektik der Aujkliirung, Frankfurt a.M. (Suhrkamp) 1969, p. 263. 19 Ibid., p. 312. 20 L YOTARD, JEAN-FRAN
